Tokyo — Asian shares stepped back on Tuesday, weighed by US growth concerns and as China cut its economic expansion target amid growing challenges from rising debt and a dispute over trade and technology with the US. Beijing lowered the growth target for this year to 6% to 6.5%, as expected, from about 6.5% in 2018 and offered more stimulus, including cuts in taxes and social security fees, increases in infrastructure investment and lending to small firms. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.5%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.6% and Japan’s Nikkei lost 0.6%. While Asian shares were broadly weaker, China’s spending plans gave mainland markets some support with the blue-chip CSI300 index briefly gaining as much as 0.5% from Monday’s nine-month high in early trade. It later gave up these gains and fell 0.1%. “As further details of the economic package will be rolled out in coming days, Chinese share markets could extend gains further near-term,” said ...
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