Stocks climb on trade hopes, Huawei relief

Chinese stocks edged higher on Wednesday after Huawei’s chief financial officer was granted bail by a Canadian court, and as US President Donald trump sounded upbeat about a trade deal with China.

The Shanghai Composite index edged 0.31 percent higher at 2,602.15 points. The blue-chip CSI300 index also traded 0.34 percent higher at 3,170.61. The smaller Shenzhen index was up 0.16 percent and the start-up board ChiNext Composite index edged 0.05 percent.

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was granted bail by a Canadian court on Tuesday, 10 days after her arrest in Vancouver. Trump said talks were taking place with Beijing by phone and he would not raise tariffs on Chinese imports until he was sure about a deal.

Market sentiment is turning more positive as China celebrates the 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up, said Zhang Qi, a Shanghaibased analyst with Haitong Securities, noting that investors “believe the government will come up with more measures to support” the economy and the stock market to mark the occasion.

But many investors stayed on the sidelines this week.

“Many large institutional investors are not willing to take the risk of losing more toward the end of the year,” Zhang said.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on December 7 that despite several years of talks with its Chinese counterparts, regulators still face obstacles in getting information needed for accounting investigations and inspections of China-based auditors.

“China’s State security laws are invoked at times to limit US regulators’ ability to oversee the financial reporting of US-listed, China-based companies,” the SEC said in a joint statement with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Industry analysts cautioned that the move might signal tougher regulations on US-listed China-based companies in the future.