Asia close: Investors holding their breath ahead of Chinese data

The region's main equity benchmarks finished the Tuesday session generally higher, supported by positive remarks out of the German government on Mario Draghi's crisis plans. That ahead of a raft of economic indicators due out in China on Thursday at a moment when there are still some worries regarding prospects for growth in the Asian giant. As an example of the same, Bloomberg cites Patrick Chovanec, an associate professor at Tsinghua University as forecasting that China's economic growth may slow to 4% to 5% this year. Chovanec points to the weak earnings announcements coming out of the country of late as vindicating his position. Due to the above sentiment towards Chinese assets is now at multi-year lows based on various metrics. Insurer China Life fell almost 2% after warning on first half profits. Over in Japan stocks closed at four week highs, ahead of the Bank of Japan's (BoJ) rate setting meeting on Thursday and despite a technical glitch which halted derivates trading on the Tokyo bourse for over 90 minutes last night. The BoJ is expected to refrain from additional monetary easing due to its view that the economy is experiencing a moderate recovery, the Nikkei reported. Lastly, overnight both the Royal Bank of Australia (at 3.5%) and the New Zealand central bank (at 2.5%) opted to keep their main policy rates unchanged. New Zealand's Prime Minister, John Key, has warned against making one-way bets on the Kiwi.