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* Chinese stocks slide 6 percent
* Oil and copper at 6-year lows
* Debate intensifies over when Fed will start raising rates
By Jamie McGeever
LONDON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - A 6 percent fall in Chinese
shares on Tuesday hit Asian stocks and left European equities
struggling for gains while emerging market currencies and oil
prices touched multi-year lows.
A broad measure of Asian stocks fell to its lowest in two
years and U.S. stock futures pointed to a lower open on Wall
Street.
"The late rout in Chinese stocks appears to have knocked
sentiment in Europe this morning. The commodity sell-off is also
weighing on sentiment today," said Craig Erlam, senior market
analyst at Oanda in London.
Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.3 percent .FTSE . The
pan-European FTSEurofirst index of 300 leading shares eked out
gains of 0.2 percent .FTEU3 , having been in negative territory
much of the morning. Germany's .GDAXI fell 0.1 percent and
France's CAC 40 .FCHI was down a quarter of a percent.
Earlier, China's main Shanghai Composite and Shenzhen 300
indices both lost 6.2 percent .SSEC .CSI300 as investors bet
that demand in China will cool further.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan
.MIAPJ0000PUS fell 1 percent to its lowest since August 2013.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 dipped 0.3 percent.
Thai shares .SET hit a 1-1/2-year low and the baht a
six-year low after a bomb blast in Bangkok on Monday killed 19
people, including three foreign tourists.
The worries over China came on a day when trade in the yuan
was relatively calm after Beijing fixed the currency's exchange
rate marginally higher for the third successive session.
China's central bank on Tuesday set the yuan's midpoint near Monday's closing price at 6.3966 per dollar. In
the spot market, the yuan closed flat at 6.3938.
Emerging market currencies were weak across the board. In
Turkey, where Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was set to give up
trying to form a government, the lira hit a
record low, and the South African rand
slid to a 14-year low against a firm dollar.
"The weakness of sentiment in emerging market FX is
striking," Societe Generale (PARIS:SOGN) currency strategists said in a note
to clients on Tuesday.
"Fear of a resumption of significant capital outflows if the
Fed does raise rates next month as well as fear of further yuan
weakness and concern about the sluggish pace of global growth
are all delivering persistent broad-based weakness."
MSCI's main index of emerging market shares .MSCIEF fell
0.8 percent.
In developed markets, the euro slipped 0.2 percent to
$1.1060 EUR= and the yen was flat at 124.30 yen JPY=.
The British pound hit a seven-week high above $1.57
after UK inflation came in higher than forecast.
Investors will look to U.S. inflation data and minutes of
the latest Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting, both being
issued on Wednesday, as they ponder when the Fed will begin
raising interest rates.
Markets are still not fully convinced the Fed will raise
rates in September, but most investors are betting a rate hike
will occur by the end of year. The yield on U.S. 10-year
Treasuries was 1 basis point higher at 2.16 percent US10YT=RR .
Commodity prices remained under pressure from worries about
growth slowing in China. Brent oil futures fell 0.2
percent to $48.64 per barrel, edging closer to a six-month
intraday low of $48.24 touched last week.
U.S. crude futures fell 0.4 percent to $41.79, having
hit a 6-1/2-year low on Friday.
Copper futures touched a fresh six-year low at
$5,012 a tonne before recovering to $5,030, down 1.7 percent.