The chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund said on Wednesday that China had no plans for further investments in Western financial institutions, nor did it have any plans to “save” the world through economic policies.

The comments by Lou Jiwei, the chairman and chief executive of the China Investment Corporation are the clearest signal yet that after sustaining heavy losses on initial investments in the Blackstone Group, Morgan Stanley and Barclays, state-run Chinese institutions have no appetite for further purchases in this sector. “Right now we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we do not know what problems they may have,” Lou said as part of a panel discussion on the second and final day of the Clinton Global Initiative conference here.

Asked whether China might pursue economic policies aimed at saving the world, Lou said that the country’s leaders had a narrower focus. “China can only save herself because the scale of China is still rather small,” he said, adding that while China has more people than any other country, economic output is still low enough that the Chinese economy is not yet big enough to have a big effect on the global economy. “If China can do a good job domestically, that is the best thing it can do for the world,” he said. Lou’s comments represent the clearest statement yet that as global financial markets have plunged this year and economies have slowed, the attention of China’s leaders is turning inward.

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