Chinese shares close mixed on Fri

Shanghai key index closed slightly lower on Friday dragged by PetroChina<601857><857>, the biggest heavy weight on the market, despite an overall rally in the steel sector.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which covers both A shares and B shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, edged down 0.20% or 7.48 to 3,796.58 points after fluctuating between 3,838.06 and 3,746.40 points.

The Shenzhen Component Index on the smaller Shenzhen Stock Exchange moved up 1.26% or 170.35 points to 13,718.96 points, after touching an intraday high of 13,941.90 points.

The combined turnover on the two bourses shrunk to RMB 109.9 billion from RMB 121.9 billion of the previous trading day.

PetroChina, which accounts for one quarter of the key Shanghai index, said on Thursday that it lost RMB 36.2 billion (US$5.4 billion) in its oil refining and processing businesses last year, which it attributed to huge gaps between world crude prices and the much lower ones set by the government. Its shares closed 3.97% lower at RMB 21.03. While Sinopec<600028><386>, influenced by PetroChina, moved down 2.47% to RMB 13.81.

Almost all heavy weights witnessed drops except Aluminum Corp of China<601600><2600> whose share jumped 4.59% to RMB 24.15. China Shenhua Energy Co<601088><1088>, the nation's top coal producer, lost 1.47% to RMB 48.14. Bank of China<601988><3988>, the country's leading foreign exchange lender, edged down 0.20% to RMB 5.05.

Steel makers were the biggest winners in correlation with high product prices and talk of further rationalization in the industry. All stocks in the sector enjoyed a gain with nearly 10 of them saw a daily cap rise of 10%.

As a whole, winners outweighed losers by 609 to 216 in Shanghai and 465 to 182 in Shenzhen.