China
Hong Kong's stock market ended lower on Friday with the benchmark Hang Seng Index down 1.43 percent to close at 25,906.65 points.
The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index lost 1.91 percent to end at 9,168.58 points, while the Hang Seng Tech Index shed 2.37 percent to close at 5,908.08 points.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index closes lower Friday
Japan's core consumer prices rose 3.1 percent on average in 2025, marking the fourth straight annual increase, government data showed Friday.
For the whole of 2025, rice prices soared 67.5 percent, the biggest rise since 1971 when comparable data became available, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
In December 2025 alone, the nationwide consumer price index, which strips out prices of fresh food, rose 2.4 percent from a year earlier, slowing for the first time in four months from three percent in November, helped by government subsidies for gasoline, the data showed.
Energy prices fell 3.1 percent in the reported month from the prior year, reversing from a rise of 2.5 percent in November, while prices for food, excluding fresh items, increased 6.7 percent, decelerating from a 7 percent gain in November.
The core-core consumer price index (Core-core CPI), which strips away both energy and fresh food to reflect underlying price trends, eased to 2.9 percent in December from 3 percent a month earlier.
Japan's core consumer prices rise by 3.1 pct in 2025
