While leading Japanese indexes rose in the early hours of trading on Asian markets, the Chinese ones went in the opposite direction, possibly a reaction to the US's new-old President Donald Trump now returning to talk about extra tariffs on Chinese goods in percent – 10 percent.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index was up as much as 1.5 percent and the broader Topix index was up 0.9 percent.
In China, however, the composite index in Shanghai was down 0.9 percent and the one in Shenzhen was down 1 percent.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index showed a decline of 1.4 percent, while South Korea's Kospi index was up 0.8 percent.