Investors offloaded shares during late trading in China as oil prices went south again.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite closed down 6.42% while Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell by 2.48%. This was the lowest closing value in 13 months.

Markets fell despite the interference of the Chinese central bank which tried to inject liquidity into the market.

The sell-off came after new economic data was released which showed that China’s rail freight volume fell by 11.9% between 2014 and 2015. This has added to fears that the Chinese economy is growing at a slower rate than that indicated by the government's official statistics.

Traders are prepared for a difficult morning on European markets - at shortly after 9:00am the FTSE was down 85 at 5,792, while the ISEQ had fallen 71 points to 6,256.

Oil

Brent crude prices dropped dipped below $30 - falling by 2.62%.

This comes after a 6% fall yesterday when the Iraqi oil ministry announced that it had pumped record volumes of crude oil last month. The Times (London) reports that officials in the country have indicated that this figure will continue to rise.