China and India pull back from EU after Greek surprise

His finance minister, Zhu Guangyao, said EU plans to boost the lending power of its bail-out fund, the EFSF, remain too vague and that Greece has created too much uncertainty for Beijing to make a decision.

"The fund has not established details of its investment options, so we still can't talk about the issue of investing ... Like our European friends, we did not expect the Greek referendum," he told the BBC.

Andy Xie, an independent, Shanghai-based economist in a note on Wednesday gave several reasons for China to stay out.

He said Beijing risks losing its money, that Europe will not grant political favours in return, that it is "morally wrong" for hard-working Chinese people to support wealthy Europeans and that the EU has enough money to solve the crisis alone.

For his part, Indian Prime Minister and former economist Manmohan Singh in a pre-Cannes statement said that if the International Monetery Fund gives too much money to the EU, there will be nothing left for developing countries.

"We have to be wary of contagion effects ... We need to ensure that developing countries have access to requisite funds through multilateral development banks and to investible surpluses to meet their infrastructure and other priority needs," he said.

Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee told newswires the EU must decide how to handle Greece before India gets involved.

"Let them make a credible assessment of the solvency issue, try to sort out those problems and then, afterward, supplementary financing could be considered. Let us see what the leaders decide," he noted.

"We are not sure of the outcome because the nature of the crisis has changed," an Indian official told India's Economic Times on condition of anonymity.

Asian markets on Thursday suffered losses on the back of the Greek decision underlining the importance of eurozone stability for the global economy. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 2.2 percent, South Korea's Kospi lost 1.3 percent and Australia's S&P AXS 200 fell 0.7 percent.

The euro crisis is also causing political fall-out in France, where opposition centre-left politicians have roasted Sarkozy for going begging to Asia.

"By turning to the Chinese, the Europeans are showing they are weak," Socialist party chief Martine Aubry said in the Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.

"What we've ended up with now is a double dependence. We're dependent on Germany, which sets the rules of the game, and dependent on China, which is being elevated to the status of an economic and financial empire that will fly to the rescue of the European Union," Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande said on TV at the weekend.