HONG KONG — Shanghai advanced on Thursday after another tepid reading on Chinese manufacturing activity that will likely raise hopes for fresh monetary easing, while Tokyo edged up to a new 15-year high.
Shanghai rallied 1.87%, or 83.13 points, to 4,529.42 and Tokyo gave up most early gains to end marginally higher, adding 6.31 points to 20,202.87 -- its highest since April 2000. Sydney added 0.93%, or 52.0 points, to 5,662.3.
Seoul fell 0.78%, or 16.73 points, to close at 2,122.81 and Hong Kong eased 0.22%, or 61.33 points, to close at 27,523.72.
In Southeast Asia, Jakarta ended up 0.39%, or 20.46 points, at 5,313.21 and Malaysia's main share index lost 0.83%, or 15.07 points, to close the day on 1,795.04.
Singapore rose 0.01%, or 0.18 points, to close at 3,439.86, while Manila closed 0.59% lower, giving up 46.55 points to 7,835.38.
European stock markets fell at the start of trading, with London's benchmark FTSE 100 index losing 0.1% to 7,000.19 points.
Frankfurt's DAX 30 dropped 0.28% to 11,815.43 points and the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.24% to 5,120.88 from Wednesday's close.
A preliminary reading of HSBC's purchasing managers' index (PMI) for China showed activity picked up in May, but continued to shrink, despite Beijing's efforts to kick-start the sluggish economy, including three interest rate cuts since November.
The index registered 49.1 this month, a two-month high but still below the 50 mark that separates contraction from growth. It was at 48.9 in April.
"It remains extremely hard if not impossible for any revival to be sustained," Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Group AG in Hong Kong, wrote in a report before the data release.
"Further policy support is still needed to stabilise China's growth momentum and arrest the passive tightening of monetary conditions," Wang said, according to Bloomberg News.