China’s A-shares posted modest gains on Friday, driven by a surge in investor confidence, according to a market analyst.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index edged up 0.41 percent to 3,889.35 points.

The Shenzhen Component Index closed 0.84 percent higher at 13,258.33 points.

Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN), highlighted that the Central Economic Work Conference took center stage this week, with market sentiments aligning positively with the official outcomes of the meeting.

The annual Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing from Wednesday to Thursday as Chinese leaders decided priorities for the economic work in 2026.

"The big thing this week, obviously was the Central Economic Work Conference. The market, I think got what it was looking for in the official readout of that meeting. There was similar support for economic growth that we saw come out of the fourth plenum meeting in November, reaffirming some of the things we're expecting to see in the next Five-Year Plan (2026-2030). The Shanghai Composite Index was up about 0.5 percent by the end of today's session as investors really digested the prospects for more fiscal spending, boost to consumption and investment, and also the prospect of some monetary easing. Banks traded modestly lower actually on the prospect of these lower interest rates, but we saw most of the other sectors trading higher really, the announcements were well received," said Pope.

"A couple of semiconductors are worth mentioning today. One of those, ACM Research Shanghai, jumped sharply this afternoon. It ended about 8 percent higher. That came after a Reuters report that said that Intel has been testing its chipmaking equipment with a view to using it in the manufacture of some of Intel's most advanced chips. Now this will probably ruffle some manufacturers in the U.S. because ACM [has been] actually under U.S. sanctions since last year, on the grounds that it's a threat to U.S. national security - something, of course, which ACM strongly denies. So the prospect of Intel using ACM tech is perhaps a bit controversial. Also in the spotlight was the newly-listed Moore Threads Technology, the Chinese GPU maker. Its shares fell by 13.4 percent today after it warned of trading risks in its shares. Now, this seems like it was code for 'cool it a bit', because the shares have absolutely blitzed the markets since they listed a week ago. They're up something like sevenfold. Their first day jump was in the excess of 400 percent. So, while today's pullback is sort of big by normal market standards, on the strength of how it's been trading so far, a 13.5-percent dip is peanuts for this company's stock at the moment," he said.

Elsewhere, we also saw some pretty decent performances for copper and gold stocks. We saw the prices of both metals hitting record highs. I think it was an all-time record for copper and a one-month high for gold. So all-in-all for the Chinese mainland not a bad Friday," said the analyst.