China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index (SCI) on Friday rose for the third consecutive day on stronger-than-expected US economic data. The index rose 0.5 percent to 2,593.17 led by shippers and computer products makers. However, the SCI declined 1.3 percent this week, its fourth straight week of declines, and the benchmark is down 7.7 percent for the year. A report in the Financial Times noted that the SCI’s three days of gains this week followed a sternly worded editorial in the state-run China Securities Journal that said investors should not be so bearish when valuations are cheap. The SCI was down 6 percent in the two days before the editorial was published and gained 3 percent for the rest of the week. In another sign of the influence China’s government wields over the country’s equity markets, the China Securities Journal on Friday reported that domestic insurers had invested RMB10 billion (USD1.6 billion) in equities and mutual funds this week. China’s insurers are strongly influenced, if not outright controlled, by China’s central government.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 0.1 percent to 19,620.0 on Friday, to mark a 6.3 percent decline for the week. Investors shifted from global cyclical firms to companies that would benefit from rising domestic consumption in the mainland and in Hong Kong. 

South Korea’s Kospi closed Friday with a 1.33 percent decline, erasing two days of slight gains for the benchmark index as automakers and refiners lost ground. The Kospi has retreated 17.4 percent since Aug. 2. Analysts expect the market to remain volatile into early September as Europe and the US continue to experience economic hardship.

Russia’s economy expanded by 3.4 percent in the April to June period, its second straight quarter of slowing gross domestic product growth, according to data from the Federal Statistics Service. Russia’s GDP grew by 4.1 percent in the first quarter. A slowing global economic recovery has affected demand for Russian commodities, a pillar of the country’s resource-driven economy. Russia’s leadership has targeted annual growth of 8 percent in five years.

India’s factory output growth rose by 8.8 percent year over year in June, far outpacing the 5.95 percent yearly growth recorded in May. The strong reading suggests that India’s economy is growing at a robust pace despite shocks to the global economic system, though the outlook for the rest of the year is murky, analysts said. India’s benchmark Sensex index declined by 219.77 points on Friday to 16,839.63, a 1.29 percent drop.

China began construction on 7.318 million units of low-cost public housing in the January-July period, according to data from the China Housing and Urban-Rural Development ministry. However, unnamed sources told Reuters that the Chinese government was considering lowering its full-year target to 8 million units from the original goal of 10 million targets. Government officials did not confirm the report. China’s Premier Wen Jiabao said in March that the country would build 36 million units of affordable housing as part of its five-year plan ending in 2015. A recent report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch said that China’s government would get “more serious” about building social housing and accelerate spending on the program in the second half of 2011 and in 2012. An “increasingly uncertain” global economy and a transfer of power in Beijing will likely ramp up spending on public housing, and “real growth” of spending on the project could be as high as 25 percent in 2012. However, a recent high-profile train accident in China has intensified fears that China’s infrastructure projects may be advancing too quickly. A Wall Street Journal report highlighted an increasing number of stories in state media that warned of shoddy workmanship in low-income housing. A recent article in the state-run People’s Daily, the mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party said, “If low-income housing construction is blindly devvoted to speed, then like the frequent accidents we’ve seen recently, problems will keep occurring…and potentially even end in tragedy.”