China says Europe will overcome debt crisis

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is confident that Europe will be able to overcome its debt crisis, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said, adding stability in the eurozone was crucial for the global economic recovery.

Yang, however, made no mention about increasing investment in Europe in his statement late on Saturday on President Hu Jintao's trip to the G20 leaders' meeting in southern France.

"We believe that Europe has the complete wisdom and ability to solve the debt problem," Yang said in remarks published on the Foreign Ministry's website.

"China has always supported Europe's response to the international financial crisis and its economic recovery efforts," he said.

The euro zone has been looking to China play a role in supporting its rescue fund by investing some of its $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves -- the world's largest.

But there are limits to what Beijing can actually deliver, Cheng Siwei, a former top Chinese lawmaker, said on Saturday, even though China is willing to help Europe, its largest export market, to deal with the debt crisis.

Leaders of the world's major economies, meeting on the French Riviera, told Europe to sort out its own problems and deferred until next year any move to provide more crisis-fighting resources to the International Monetary Fund,

Yang said that Hu emphasized during his trip "the development and the recovery of the European economy to achieve recovery" of the global economy.