The ink on the eurozone’s newest comprehensive plan was barely dry when Klaus Regling, head of the currency bloc’s rescue fund, darted off to Beijing to tap its coffers of sovereign wealth. A fund manager must go wherever the potential investors are. But wise European politicians will treat his efforts with benign neglect.

Too few leaders appreciate the significance of one simple but fundamental fact: the eurozone is in external balance. It imports about as much as it exports and as much money enters the bloc as departs it. The crisis is not one of external financing for the monetary union as a whole. It is one of internal asymmetries between surplus and deficit member countries and between the public and private sectors in all of them.

The European financial stability facility’s purpose is to match these asymmetries. On the back of guarantees by stronger member states, it will raise private funding and channel it to governments struggling to finance themselves in the market. For the EFSF itself, there is no reason not to approach China as a potential investor. But the monetary union itself has no need for China’s savings and good reasons to stay away from them.