China will get involved “more deeply,” Premier Wen Jiabao said in mid-February, at a meeting in Beijing with a top-level European Union delegation. China will support the E.U. “in its own way,” said Vice President Xi Jinping, during a Feb. 20 visit to Ireland.

 

But behind those vague promises is reluctance by China to move too quickly, and put the country’s vast foreign exchange reserve holdings at risk. At work is a cold-headed calculation: Chinese economic policymakers currently don’t see a consensus in Europe as to what to do, and they don’t think that buying up euros, or more bonds of indebted E.U. countries, is a particularly safe bet.