Chinese leaders like to talk about their country's "peaceful rise" - and Europe's financial traumas are giving Beijing plenty of scope to assume the role of a benign new force on the world stage.
President Hu Jintao has presented himself as a "friend in need" during encounters with European supplicants while stopping short, for now, of committing China to a specific contribution.
But China has been showing a very different face to countries closer to home in an increasingly tense confrontation over rival claims to the resource-rich waters of the South China Sea.
It is a region where the peaceful nature of China's rise is starting to be questioned as it pushes a long-standing maritime claim that stretches deep into South East Asia.
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