HONG KONG (AP) – Asian stock markets gained more ground Tuesday, following Wall Street's advance as an upbeat U.S. manufacturing report buoyed investor confidence in a global recovery.

Most major markets were higher for a second straight session, while the dollar fell against the yen and the euro. Crude oil prices closed in on $82 a barrel.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 stock average added 27.04 points, or 0.3 percent, to 10,681.83, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 415.57 points, or 1.9 percent, to 22,238.85.

Elsewhere, Shanghai's main stock measure climbed 1.1 percent to 3,280.36 after falling the day before. Australia's market was up 1 percent, helped by stronger commodity prices, while Singapore's index gained 0.7 percent and India's Sensex rose 0.7 percent.

In South Korea, the Kospi edged down 0.3 percent to 1,691.50.

Lifting sentiment across the region was an overnight rise in US markets. Wall Street opened 2010 with strong gains amid optimism about the country's economic recovery after a report showed demand at American factories was increasing. The Institute for Supply Management's index of manufacturing activity rose to 55.9 from 53.6 in November, a bigger improvement than analysts predicted.

The news boosted exporters across Asia, combining with stronger commodity prices in recent days to fuel hopes the pickup in global demand and economic activity was sustainable.

Still, a number of outstanding problems faced by the world economy, including high debt in the West, could continue to drag on growth and become more pronounced once the effects of government stimulus measures start to fade, analysts say.

``That doesn't mean there's going to be a sharp contraction in the global economy,'' said Jan Friederich, a senior economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Hong Kong. ``It's just that we're not going to come back to the high growth rates that markets are expecting and that we saw before the crisis.''