Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, while rural areas of Japan are suffering with ageing populations and declining birth rates.<\/p>\n
Prisma by Dukas \/ Contributor \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Wednesday as investors awaited the outcome of the U.S. Federal Reserve<\/a>‘s two-day meeting, where it is expected to cut interest rates.<\/p>\n Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index was 0.25% lower in choppy trading to close at 44,790.38, while the Topix index fell 0.71% to 3,145.83.<\/p>\n The country’s exports dropped 0.1%<\/a> year on year in August, government data showed, less than the 1.9% drop expected by economists polled by Reuters. The latest reading compares with the 2.6% decline in exports in the previous month.<\/p>\n Exports from the world’s fourth-largest economy have fallen into negative territory as the country grapples with U.S. tariffs and a slowdown from the front-loading of exports at the start of the year.<\/p>\n Australia’s ASX\/S&P 200<\/a> retreated 0.67% to end the trading session at 8,818.5.<\/p>\n South Korea’s Kospi<\/a> index lost 1.05% to close at 3,413.4, while the small-cap Kosdaq fell 0.74% to 845.53.<\/p>\n Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index<\/a> climbed 1.71%, while the Hang Seng Tech<\/a> index jumped 4.2%. Hong Kong-listed shares of Baidu<\/a> surged as much as 14% after the Chinese language search provider announced<\/a> Tuesday the completion of a 4.4 billion Chinese yuan ($618 million) offshore bond offering due in 2029.<\/p>\n Baidu also signed<\/a> an agreement with state-owned China Merchants Group earlier on Monday to collaborate on AI technologies. Mainland’s CSI 300 added 0.61% to close at 4,551.02.<\/p>\n India’s benchmark Nifty 50 rose 0.36%, while the Sensex index added 0.42%.<\/p>\n Singapore’s non-oil domestic exports plunged 11.3% in August year over year, according to government data Wednesday<\/a>, missing the 1% rise expected by Reuters-polled economists. The latest reading was dragged by falling demand in specialized machinery, food preparations and petrochemicals. It followed a revised 4.7% decline in July.<\/p>\n The city-state is one of the world’s most open economies, and its exports are widely watched as a bellwether of global demand and economic health.<\/p>\n U.S. equity futures<\/a> were little changed in early Asian hours ahead of the Fed meeting Wednesday stateside. The central bank is widely expected to cut interest rates for the first time since December.<\/p>\n Overnight stateside, U.S. stocks<\/a> were lower as investors took some profits ahead of the Fed outcome.<\/p>\n The\u00a0S&P 500<\/a>\u00a0traded 0.13% lower to close at 6606.76, after hitting a fresh record earlier in the session. The\u00a0Nasdaq Composite<\/a>\u00a0lost 0.07% to finish the session at 22,333.96. The\u00a0Dow Jones Industrial Average<\/a>\u00a0dropped 125.55 points, or 0.27%, to close at 45,757.90.<\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie, Pia Singh and Alex Harring contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, while rural areas of Japan are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[4055,48227,48229,491,79,207,12388,14717,179,18,4050,48228,19,5389,17,4051,188,6613,4054],"class_list":{"0":"post-69421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-asia-economy","9":"tag-asx-ltd","10":"tag-baidu-inc","11":"tag-breaking-news-markets","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-business-news","14":"tag-central-banking","15":"tag-currency-markets","16":"tag-economy","17":"tag-eire","18":"tag-hang-seng-index","19":"tag-hang-seng-tech-index-etf","20":"tag-ie","21":"tag-interest-rates","22":"tag-ireland","23":"tag-kospi-index","24":"tag-markets","25":"tag-world-economy","26":"tag-world-markets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}