Most Asian stocks fell on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump's imposition of trade tariffs on Colombia rattled risk appetite with the possibility of more such moves.

Chinese markets were a mixed bag, as investors bought some local technology names on optimism over DeepSeek R1- a new artificial intelligence model that could potentially disrupt development in the sector.

But further gains in China were stymied by weaker-than-expected purchasing managers index data, which highlighted a sustained decline in China's economy.

Regional markets took a weak lead-in from Wall Street, with U.S. stock index futures falling in Asian trade as speculation over DeepSeek battered major technology stocks, especially Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). The stock sank over 5% in 24 hour markets, RobinHood data showed.

China Tech Rises on DeepSeek Hype, but PMIs Disappoint

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was an outlier among its Asian peers on Monday, rising 0.6% on gains in heavyweight internet stocks.

Majors Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) Inc (HK:9888), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (HK:9988) and Tencent Holdings Ltd (HK:0700) rose between 0.9% and 3.5%.

Sentiment towards Chinese internet stocks was boosted by the release of DeepSeek R1, a large-language model that claimed to rival offerings from OpenAI and Meta (NASDAQ:META) at a fraction of the cost.

The LLM ramped up hopes that Chinese firms could offer competitive AI products despite a lack of access to cutting-edge AI tech from majors such as Nvidia.

Major Chinese chipmaking stocks- such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (HK:0981) and Sunny Optical Technology Group Co Ltd (HK:2382) had rallied last week on this notion, although they fell amid some profit-taking on Monday.

For more insights on market trends, check out the Market Biggest Gainers API and the Sector Historical API.