A surprise interest payment by China Evergrande helped spur gains in Asia and should support European stocks early Friday, with sentiment lifted by news that China Evergrande has made an overdue interest payment to international bondholders.

The Chinese real-estate developer on Thursday sent $83.5 million to the trustee for the dollar bonds, and that financial institution will in turn pay bondholders, the Securities Times reported. The financial paper is run by the Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper. It was an unexpected move that allows Evergrande to stave off a default.

Gains for tech and property developers in Asia helped lift most of the region’s major stock benchmarks, with the mood also buoyed by a late wave of buying on Wall Street that pushed the S&P 500 to a new record high on Thursday.

U.S. Issues $100 Billion in Export Licenses to Suppliers of Huawei, SMIC

The U.S. Commerce Department issued more than $100 billion worth of export licenses for semiconductors and other products to suppliers of Huawei Technologies Co. and another blacklisted Chinese tech company, as a global chip shortage started to bite.

The Commerce data, released Thursday by a Republican member of Congress, shows the department granted 113 export licenses worth about $61 billion for suppliers of telecom giant Huawei and 188 licenses valued at $42 billion for suppliers of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s largest chip maker, from Nov. 9, 2020, through April 20 this year.