Development diverged on the leading Asian stock exchanges during the initial Friday trading.
On the Tokyo stock exchange, trading was cautious, with the Nikkei 225 index up 0.1 percent when investors took a lunch break, the broader Topix index hovered around zero.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng was simultaneously down 0.9 percent. The composite indexes in Shanghai and Shenzhen pointed to a plus of 0.3 percent and a minus of 0.3 percent, respectively.
