China doesn't want to "buy up" Europe - report

[dipsydoodle]

(Reuters) - China has no intention of "buying up" a debt-ridden Europe and any help Beijing offers will be for purely economic reasons, a top state-run newspaper said on Monday ahead of a China-EU summit.

While Chinese leaders have repeatedly expressed confidence in European nations, they have also refrained from making firm financial commitments, urging Europe first to take further steps on its own.

Premier Wen Jiabao, meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Beijing this month, said China was considering increasing its participation in the rescue funds aimed at resolving the debt crisis, though he gave no explicit pledges.

In a suggestion of the tone China wishes to strike at its summit with senior EU officials on Tuesday, Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in a front page commentary that China's interests lay in selflessly helping Europe.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/uk-china-europe-idUKTRE81C0IU20120213

[Kolesar]

1. "China has from the beginning strongly supported the EU and the euro, in clear contrast to ...

"China has no appetite or ability to 'buy up Europe' or 'control Europe' as some European commentators have said," wrote Feng Zhongping, director of the Institute of European Studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.

"China has from the beginning strongly supported the EU and the euro, in clear contrast to the 'talking down' of Europe in the international community," Feng wrote in the piece, carried in the paper's overseas edition.