Shenzhen trade with APEC economies sets record in Q1, leads country

The imports and exports of south China's tech hub of Shenzhen with other APEC economies reached 899.65 billion yuan (around 132.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of this year, marking a 30.2 percent year-on-year increase, according to the latest official data released by the Shenzhen Customs on Friday.

This quarterly figure represents a historic high and ranks Shenzhen first among all cities in the Chinese mainland.

Shenzhen will play host to the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting on Nov 18 and 19, accompanied by the APEC CEO Summit and the joint ministerial meeting of foreign and trade ministers.

Chinese mainland equity markets closed slightly lower on Friday, giving back some of the momentum from earlier multi-year highs as renewed geopolitical concerns in the Middle East weighed heavily on investor sentiment, according to a market analyst.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended the session flat at 4,179.95 points, while the Shenzhen Component Index slipped 0.5 percent to 15,563.80 points.

The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 0.96 percent to close at 3,796.13 points.

Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN), attributed the pullback to renewed tensions between Iran and the U.S.

"We had the Chinese mainland markets hitting all sorts of multi-year highs, particularly small-cap tech stocks, on Wednesday. But the war in the Middle East was back to dominate sentiment on Friday. The word that keeps being used to describe the current U.S.-Iran ceasefire is 'fragile', and despite strikes from both sides on Thursday, they insist it's holding. But the market's hopes for that one-page peace deal that the White House had been touting earlier in the week, they really have been dealt a serious blow. The Shanghai Composite Index ended the session pretty much flat. The Shenzhen Component lost about half of one percent, and the small-cap ChiNext board was off by almost 1 percent," said Pope.

He noted that chip stocks led the decline as investors locked in profits following strong midweek rallies.

"Chip stocks were the biggest decliners this session. Investors were really taking profits there. But they had very strong sessions, particularly as I said on Wednesday, and they were ripe for a bit of profit-taking. An index tracking semiconductor stocks managed to regain a little bit of ground by the end of the session, but it was still down more than 2.5 percent at the close. Energy stocks were also down, with any resolution of the U.S.-Iran war looking like a more and more distant prospect," said the analyst.