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HONG KONG : Asian stocks were mixed on Monday after Japan released data showing its economic growth had slowed in the second quarter, raising fresh doubts about the strength of the global recovery.
Tokyo slipped 0.61 percent, or 56.79 points, to end at 9,196.67 while Sydney dropped 0.47 percent, or 21.1 points, to 4,438.5.
However, Hong Kong reversed earlier losses to end 0.19 percent, of 40.55 points, higher at 21,112.12, while Shanghai surged 2.11 percent, adding 55.01 points to 2,661.71.
Japan announced its gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at the slowest pace in the past three quarters in the April-June period as the export-led recovery faltered due to crumbling demand at home and abroad.
The government said the economy grew an annualised 0.4 percent in the June quarter, from a revised 4.4 percent in the previous three months and well off the 2.3 percent growth predicted by a Dow Jones Newswires poll of economists.
On a quarterly basis, growth was at 0.1 percent, down from a revised 1.1 percent in the previous quarter.
"It was a negative surprise," said Yoshiki Shinke, Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute senior economist. "Such figures were very much unexpectedly weak."
The Japanese data follows several weeks of downbeat figures that suggest the global economy's recovery from recession is stalling.
In recent weeks the United States has released weak jobs data while China's growth has slowed.
Monday's figures also raised the prospect that Japan will relinquish its title of world's second biggest economy to China.
While remaining just ahead of China in nominal terms in the first half, Japan slipped behind its Asian rival in the April-June period, government data showed.
On a nominal basis, Japan's GDP was at 2.578 trillion dollars compared to China's 2.532 trillion dollars in the first half, the cabinet office said in a preliminary estimate.
But Japan's second quarter GDP was smaller than China's, at 1.288 trillion dollars compared with 1.336 trillion dollars, according to the government. - AFP/ch
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