Mainland China stocks slipped on Wednesday as concerns lingered over trade relations with the United States while Hong Kong gave up earlier gains and ended lower after investors digested Nvidia's resumption of chip sales up north.

The benchmark Hang Seng Index closed down 72.36 points, or 0.29 percent, at 24,517.76.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index lost 0.18 percent to end at 8,861.39 while the Hang Seng Tech Index slid 0.24 percent to 5,418.40

On the mainland, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended down 0.03 percent at 3,503.78 while the Shenzhen Component Index closed 0.22 percent lower at 10,720.81.

The combined turnover of these two indexes stood at 1.44 trillion yuan, down from 1.61 trillion yuan on Tuesday.

Stocks related to sectors such as innovative drugs and humanoid robots led gains while stocks in the insurance, steel and rare earth permanent magnet sectors suffered the largest losses.

The ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, lost 0.22 percent to close at 2,230.19.

The losses came after US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the country would fight China "in a very friendly fashion".

"In our base case, we assume that the US tariff rate on China would stay unchanged at 30 percent – but the recent escalation of US tariffs on other economies is likely to further dampen global trade momentum," Morgan Stanley economists said in a note.

"In particular, the US has started addressing transshipment concerns by introducing a two-tiered tariff structure on imports from Vietnam – 20 percent for direct imports and 40 percent for those deemed transshipments from China.

"If similar measures are extended to other countries, this could further pressure China's export performance."

Nvidia's planned resumption of sales of its H20 AI chips to China is part of US negotiations on rare earths, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday, and comes days after the chip giant's chief executive, Jensen Huang, met Trump.

Rival AI chipmaker AMD also said the US Department of Commerce would review its licence applications to export its MI308 chips to China. (Reuters/Xinhua)