SHANGHAI, Oct 29 (Reuters) - China stocks edged up on Friday as consumer staples and information technology firms gained, while the real estate sector witnessed its worst week since February 2018 on a planned tax scheme. The CSI300 Index rose 0.3% to 4,879.73 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.2% to 3,523.94 points. The Hang Seng Index dropped 0.4% to 25,443.88 points. The Hong Kong China Enterprises Index fell 0.4% to 9,013.69. ** Shares of Chinese real estate firms dropped for a fifth straight session, losing 4%. ** For the week, they were down nearly 12%, the most since February 2018. ** A planned pilot real-estate tax scheme dented risk appetite in the sector while rating agencies downgraded more Chinese developers. ** Consumer staples and information technology shares gained around 1.9% each. ** The media sub-index surged 3.7%, fuelled by the theme of “Metaverse”. ** Facebook Inc is now called Meta, the company said on Thursday, in a rebrand that focuses on building the “metaverse”, a shared virtual environment that it bets will be the successor to the mobile internet. ** “We anticipated further earnings estimate reductions through the 3Q results season, due to sustained PPI inflation, power shortages, and Delta-variant Covid outbreaks,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note. ** They added that the relaxation of liquidity in the equity market is unlikely to happen until the end of this year, if not later. ** Insurance firms weighed on Hong Kong market, after they posted weak earning results for the thrid quarter. ** Hang Seng Finance Index dropped 0.9%. Insurers China Life Insurance Co Ltd and Ping An Insurance Group lost more than 3% each, the top two percentage decliners on the Hang Seng Index. ** Third-quarter net profit for China Life Insurance and Ping An Insurace fell 54.5% and 31.2% year on year, respectively. ** Consumer staples and utilities firms gained 1.8% and 1.4%, respectively. Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi