Asian shares climbed to 2-1/2-week highs in thin trading on Thursday ahead of the Christmas holiday in the wake of gains on Wall Street and a recovery in crude oil prices but turned mixed overnight dragged by a sell-off on the mainland.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.7 percent after U.S. stocks posted their third straight session of gains.
Japan's Nikkei rose 0.3 percent on the heels of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet approval on Thursday of a record fiscal 2016 budget that counts on higher growth and tax revenue to achieve Abe's aim of reviving the economy and reining in public debt.
Australian shares jumped 1.3 percent in a shortened Christmas Eve session, while Korea's was up 0.3 percent.
China's benchmark Shanghai Composite dropped 1.4 percent snapping a two-day rally on Wednesday.
Energy Stocks Up
Energy stocks still outperformed amid a recovery in oil prices. U.S. crude rose as much as 1 percent in Asian trade after data on Wednesday showed U.S. crude inventories fell by 5.9 million barrels in the last week, compared with expectations for an increase of 1.1 million barrels.
U.S. crude futures CLc1 added 0.6 percent at $37.71 a barrel while Brent crude futures LCOc1 rose 0.6 percent to $37.58. Both had added more than a dollar a barrel on Wednesday in thin trading, a day after Brent had touched its lowest level since July 2004.
Positive economic data saw all three major U.S. averages rally 1 percent overnight. U.S. personal consumption expenditures rose 0.3 percent on-month in November, adding to the market's optimistic mood one day after better-than-expected third-quarter growth data.