BEIJING: Emerging market stocks jumped on Tuesday, helped by a rise in Chinese shares on hopes Beijing will ease its tech sector crackdown, while currencies inched up on weakness in the dollar and strong data from Central European economies. MSCI’s index of emerging market stocks rose 2 percent, while its currencies counterpart added 0.5 percent. Mainland China’s CSI300 Index gained 1.3 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index climbed 3.1 percent. Beijing’s retail, industry upended by COVID-19 restrictions The economy of China’s capital Beijing took a hit in April as authorities wrestled with a new COVID-19 outbreak, telling residents to avoid going out or work from home and halting many businesses. Retail sales in the city of nearly 22 million people, a key gauge of consumption, shrank 16.05 percent in April from a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on January-April data released by the city’s statistics bureau on Tuesday, outpacing the nation’s 11.1 percent contraction. Industrial output fell 3.3 percent in the first four months, compared with a 7.2 percent growth in the first quarter, the biggest cumulative drop since July 2020. The city’s statistics bureau did not publish data for April or offer comparative figures. Property sales in Beijing nosedived by 25.83 percent last month, further pummeling an already struggling sector, despite more policy easing steps aimed at reviving what has traditionally been a key pillar of China’s economy. Fixed-asset investment grew 8.9 percent in the first four months, slower than the 10.3 percent gain in January-March. China’s revenue from government land sales down China’s government land sales revenue fell 29.8 percent in January-April from a year earlier to 1.5012 trillion yuan ($222.04 billion), finance ministry data showed on Tuesday, down from a 27.4 percent slump in the first quarter. For April, revenue from government land sales fell 37.88 percent from a year earlier, the fastest pace since January-February 2020, according to Reuters calculations based on the ministry’s data. That was sharply wider than a 22.84 percent fall in March.