Mainland shares closed flat on Monday after hitting six-week lows, struggling to shake off recent weakness as investors continued to grapple with geopolitical tensions.

In Hong Kong, however, the benchmark Hang Seng Index regained a lot of the ground it lost at the end of last week to advance 496 points, or 1.97 percent, to 25,716.

The tech index jumped 2.8 percent.

Shares of Alibaba rallied 4.7 percent, boosted by the launch of its ChatGPT-like AI assistant Qwen chatbot.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.05 percent at 3,836 while the Shenzhen Component Index was 0.37 percent higher at 12,585 and the ChiNext Index, tracking China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, gained 0.31 percent to close at 2,929.

The blue-chip CSI300 index closed down 0.1 percent.

Lifting the market, the CSI Defence Index rallied 3.5 percent after Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Japan had crossed a red line with Taiwan comments, the latest remarks in a row that has shaken relations.

Chip-related shares bounced back, boosted by a report that the Trump administration is mulling sales of Nvidia's H200 artificial intelligence chips to China.

The CSI AI Index rose 0.8 percent and the CSI Semiconductor Index jumped 1.8 percent at the close.

The banking sector declined 0.8 percent and the energy sector lost 1.7 percent, weighing on the markets.

Monday's choppy session extended recent weakness in Chinese stocks, which logged their biggest weekly loss since December amid a global tech decline and policy vacuum.

"We expect the market to be dominated by fluctuations before the Central Economic Work Conference in December, with large-cap blue-chip stocks potentially taking the lead during this period," analysts at Chasing Securities said in a note.

The A-shares' bull market still has room to run, and driven by geopolitical tensions and industry trends, the tech sector will continue to be the medium to long-term main theme of the market, they added.

Market sentiment was buoyed after influential Federal Reserve policymaker John Williams said that interest rates can fall "in the near term", boosting the likelihood of further easing in December. (Reuters/Xinhua)