Asia markets mostly fall as investors assess China’s stimulus pledges; South Korea stocks climb

China stocks led losses in Asia Friday after Beijing affirmed its recent policy shifts and stressed on plans to boost growth following a high-profile meeting Thursday.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.39%, while mainland China’s CSI 300 was down 0.94%.

Most other Asia-Pacific markets also fell, tracking Wall Street declines following a hotter-than-expected producer price inflation reading.

The outlier was South Korea’s Kospi, which gained 0.23%, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 1.01%. Internet firm Kakao gained over 5%, with many of its subsidiaries seeing huge gains.

Shares of Samsung Biologics, the fourth-largest company in the Kospi by market cap, rose 3.6%.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 1.16%, while the broad-based Topix saw a smaller loss of 1.12%.

Investors also assessed the Bank of Japan’s Tankan survey, which showed a higher-than-expected optimism among large Japanese manufacturers.

The Tankan index for large manufacturing firms climbed to 14 in the quarter ended December, up from 13 in the September quarter and beating the 12 expected from economists polled by Reuters.

The index tracks business sentiment in the country among large companies and contributes to the BOJ’s considerations when forming monetary policy. A higher figure means that optimists outnumber pessimists, and vice versa.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.69%.

India will also release its wholesale inflation figures for November later in the day. Economists polled by Reuters expect India’s wholesale inflation rate to come down to 2.2% from October’s 2.36%. The country’s consumer inflation dropped from a 14-month high, according to data released Thursday.

Overnight in the U.S., all three major indexes slid, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 0.53% to mark its sixth straight losing day after a hotter-than-expected inflation reading.

The producer price index, which measures wholesale inflation, climbed 0.4% for November, higher than the Dow Jones estimate of 0.2%. On an annual basis, PPI advanced 3%, its biggest rise since the 12 months ended February 2023.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq retreated from the 20,000 mark and shed 0.66%, while the broad market S&P 500 shed 0.54% .

— CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Hakyung Kim contributed to this report.