Hong Kong shares rise amid wide regional stock selloffs: analyst

Hong Kong stocks closed higher Monday, with Alibaba leading gains after unveiling a new AI model, even as broader Asian markets saw a selloff, said Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN).

The benchmark Hang Seng Index rose 0.48 percent to close at 26,009.40 points. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index gained 0.46 percent to 8,652.15, while the Hang Seng Tech Index climbed 0.96 percent to 4,875.61.

"Hong Kong dodged the losses that were felt more keenly around much of the rest of the region. The Hang Seng [Index] gained 0.5 percent. Alibaba shares were a big part of that. They hit a two-month high during the session and closed about 7 percent higher after the company unveiled its latest AI model - part of a growing wave of these powerful Chinese models that have been released with open weights. The new Qwen3.8-Max is one of the largest models yet released, well, unveiled, it hasn't quite been released yet. It's got about 2.4 trillion parameters and it's quickly becoming one of the highest-ranked Chinese models out there by a number of metrics. That allowed Alibaba to buck the wider selloff in AI-related shares today. The model itself is due for release through Alibaba Cloud next week," said Pope.

Five-year RMB treasury bond futures debuted at the Hong Kong bourse on Monday, marking the first RMB treasury bond futures contract traded in the offshore market.

The product is expected to complement Bond Connect and Swap Connect by providing international investors with an effective offshore hedging tool to meet their growing need for managing government bond-related risks.

"Hong Kong also saw the trading debut of the offshore futures contracts based on Chinese government bonds today, the first of their kind. The five-year contract gives international investors another way to hedge interest-rate risks on their mainland government-bond holdings, complementing the Bond Connect and the Swap Connect programs," said Pope.

Iran and Oman are in talks to establish a unified maritime corridor through the Strait of Hormuz that would serve both countries' interests, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday.

At a press conference in Tehran, Baghaei said the discussions center on merging the southern route through Omani waters and the northern route through Iranian territorial waters into a single "intermediate corridor," a two-way passage designed to accommodate the interests and concerns of both littoral states.

He emphasized that the current talks concern a single two-way channel, rather than two or three separate routes. The proposed corridor is intended as a temporary arrangement until a fixed route is finalized to replace the current shipping lanes.