China market positive factors, HSI rally

Asia-Pacific markets rose on Thursday, with markets in the region led by Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Chinese markets extending gains.

Japan’s Nikkei climbed 2.12%, while the broad based Topix was up 1.65%, as the Bank of Japan released minutes of its July meeting.

Mainland China’s CSI 300 extended its winning streak to the seventh day, hitting its highest levels in nearly two months after Beijing rolled out a slate of economic stimulus measures on Tuesday. The index opened 0.15% higher.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced 0.91%, reaching its highest level since May.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.9%, powered by gains in chipmaker SK Hynix, which surged over 8%, while the small-cap Kosdaq gained 1.31%.

SK Hynix announced on Wednesday that it had begun mass production of the world’s first 12-layer HBM3E chip, which are used in AI memory applications.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was 0.53% higher.

Overnight in the U.S., both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 slid and retreated from their latest records. The broad-based index lost 0.19%, while the 30-stock Dow fell 0.7% despite hitting fresh records in early trading.

The Nasdaq Composite eked out a narrow gain of 0.04%.

—CNBC’s Brian Evans and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.