By Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Data from Japan and China will
likely take center stage in Asia for the second week in a row, as
investors look for further clues to health of the region's top two
economies.
On Thursday, the Bank of Japan is due to release its quarterly
"tankan" survey, a closely-scrutinized measure of sentiment and
expectations among the nation's businesses.
The Japanese economy has suffered a succession of blows over the
past year, including a catastrophic earthquake and ensuing nuclear
disaster, a persistently strong Japanese yen weighing on exporters
and recent flooding in Thailand that hurt output at Japanese plants
there.
This has come in addition to the European and U.S. debt crises
that have plagued the global economy.
Consequently, the tankan results for the previous quarter are
likely to be gloomy, and results this past week of a quarterly
survey by Reuters -- sometimes known as the "Reuters tankan" --
showed manufacturers turning pessimistic for the first time in six
months.
Over in China, HSBC is due to release preliminary results of its
monthly manufacturing survey on Thursday, and again, the picture
will likely be one of contraction.
HSBC's last Purchasing Managers' Index showed Chinese
manufacturing contracted in November, with the headline reading at
its weakest level since March 2009.
Markets will be watching to see if initial results for the
current month will show the key sector shrinking further,
particularly after official government data for November, released
this past Friday, came in mostly weaker than expected.
Meanwhile, India will also be in focus, as the nation's central
bank meets for a rate decision on Friday.
At its last meeting in late October, the Reserve Bank of India
hiked its policy interest rates by a quarter point each in an
effort to contain inflation.
However, it also signalled a pause for the December decision,
literally say "the likelihood of a rate action in the December
mid-quarter review is relatively low."
On the corporate front, Wednesday marks the deadline for
Japanese blue chip Olympus Corp. (OCPNF) to report its most recent
quarterly earnings or face delisting from the Tokyo exchange.
The company has been hit by an accounting scandal involving a
cover-up of past losses and has had to revise much of its previous
financial statements.
Still, Olympus has promised as recently as this past week that
it will file by the Dec. 14 date.