Tokyo — Asian shares tumbled on Friday after China reported a set of weak data, fanning fresh worry of a sharp slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy and leaving investors fretting over the wider impact of a yet unresolved China-US trade dispute. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.4%, while Japan’s Nikkei dropped 2.1%. Mainland China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite and the blue-chip CSI 300 declined 0.6% and 0.9%, respectively, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled 1.6%. China’s November retail sales grew at the weakest pace since 2003 and industrial output rose the least in nearly three years as domestic demand softened further, underlining rising risks to the economy as Beijing works to defuse a trade dispute with the US. The Chinese yuan lost 0.2% to 6.8910 to the dollar in the offshore trade following the data. “Although hopes of progress in US-China talks and cheap valuations are supporting the market for now, we have lots of potential pitfalls...
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