China stocks were broadly lower at midday on Wednesday, led by finance and manufacturing shares, after bomb attacks in Brussels pushed investors out of equities and into safe haven assets.
Global equity markets fell on Tuesday while safe-haven gold and government bonds were in demand after attacks on the airport and a rush-hour metro train in Brussels triggered security alerts across western Europe.
Chinese shares ended the morning session down in line with American benchmarks, but trading volumes were tepid and indexes flitted between positive and negative territory for much of the morning with no clear direction.
Total volume of A shares traded in Shanghai was 10.76 billion shares, barely a third of Tuesday’s full day volume, while Shenzhen volume was 13.30 billion shares.
The CSI300 index fell 0.4 per cent, to 3,212.84 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.3 per cent, to 2,990.15 points.
China CSI300 stock index futures for April fell 0.7 per cent, to 3,178.4, 34.44 points below the current value of the underlying index.
The Hang Seng Index dropped 0.3 per cent, to 20,612.66 points.
The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index lost 0.2 per cent, to 8,879.61.
The index measuring price differences between dual-listed companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong stood at 134.61134.56.
A value above 100 indicates Shanghai shares are pricing at a premium to shares in the same company trading in Hong Kong, and vice versa.
The northbound quota for the Hong Kong-Shanghai Stock Connect, currently set at 13 billion yuan, saw net inflows of 0.43 billion yuan.