Stock indexes for Shanghai and Shenzhen are displayed on an electronic board as people walk on a pedestrian bridge in the Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai, China, on April 3, 2025.
Go Nakamura | Reuters
Asia-Pacific markets opened mostly higher on Friday as investors appreciated the ceasefire between the United States and China following a meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The two countries reached a kind of trade deal in a high-stakes meeting in South Korea on Thursday, calming a dispute over rare earth elements that had threatened to push the world's two largest economies into a full-blown trade war.
“Both sides seem to be maintaining leverage in future negotiations by keeping these measures as bargaining chips,” said Chaoping Chu, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.
Japanese Nikkei Stock Average rose more than 1% to a new record, and TOPIX also rose 0.79% to a new high.
South Korea's Kospi rose 0.22% after hitting a record high on Thursday. The small-cap Kosdaq rose 0.47%.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 started the day 0.45% higher.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 0.33%, while mainland China's CSI300 index was flat.
China's manufacturing activity contracted more than expected in October, to its lowest level since May, an official survey showed on Friday, as trade tensions with the US government flared up during the month.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index stood at 49, lower than the 49.6 expected by economists polled by Reuters. A value above the indicator 50 indicates growth, and a value below it suggests contraction.
Manufacturing activity in the country has been contracting since April, when US President Donald Trump's tariff campaign squeezed Chinese factories and global demand.
Shares of Panasonic Holdings Inc. fell more than 8% on Thursday after the company cut its full-year operating profit forecast by 13.5%, citing lower expected profits from its main energy division, which supplies batteries to Tesla and other automakers.
Overnight in the U.S. market, all three major stock averages closed lower as investors absorbed profits from big tech companies. The S&P 500 Index fell 0.99% to close at 6,822.34, and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.57% to close at 23,581.14. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 109.88 points, or 0.23%, to trade at 47,522.12.
—CNBC's Sean Conlon and Sarah Min contributed to this report.