** China's blue-chip CSI300 Index and the Shanghai Composite Index both closed up 0.7%.
** Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index was up 0.4%, while the China Enterprises Index added 0.3%.
** Insurance shares soared 5.9%, with Ping An Insurance Group Co of China Ltd adding 10% by the daily limit, as the firm's better-than-expected first quarter earnings boosted investor sentiment.
** That led to a 1.4% rise in the CSI Financials Index .
** Meanwhile, China's industrial firms' profits shrank at a
slightly slower pace in January-March but the decline remained
in double digits as the economy struggled to fully recover from
the exit to the zero-COVID policy.
** Citi analysts said industrial profits print showed that
despite a rebound in economic growth, demand for manufactured
goods remained poor.
** Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to Ukraine's Volodymyr
Zelenskiy on Wednesday for the first time since Russia's
invasion of Ukraine, fulfilling a longstanding goal of Kyiv
which had publicly sought such talks for months.
** "Chinese local investors are positive on President Xi
Jinping's phone call with Ukraine leader and plans to send a
delegation to the war-torn country," UBS wrote in a note.
** However, tensions with the United States continued as
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that Chinese cloud
computing companies like Huawei Cloud and Alibaba Cloud could
pose a threat to U.S. security and vowed to review a request to
add them to an export control list.
** Shares of artificial intelligence (AI) and media
companies dropped, after frenzy around Chinese equivalents of
OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot fuelled speculative bets and boosted
shares in recent months.
** Media firms tumbled 4.5%, artificial
intelligence slid 1.2%.
** Tech stocks traded in Hong Kong slipped 0.3%, with Alibaba and Tencent down 1.8% and 0.9%, respectively.
(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Sohini Goswami)
