Beijing has vowed to bring ISIS to justice after the group said it had executed two hostages, a Chinese and a Norwegian.
ISIS said it had killed the two men, identified as Chinese national Fan Jinghui and Norwegian citizen Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad in its English-language online magazine.
President Xi Jinping "strongly condemned" ISIS for the killing of Fan, the first known Chinese national to be killed by the group, and the country's foreign ministry said the Chinese government would "definitely hold the perpetrators accountable."
But how to respond to Fan's "cold-blooded and violent" death presents a dilemma for China, which has stayed on the sidelines in the fight against ISIS and has a long-held principle of noninterference in other countries' affairs.
To date, Beijing has been vague on the question of what it will contribute to the global fight against ISIS and has declined to explicitly offer its support for airstrikes being conducted against the group in Syria.
Norway also condemned the killings.
"We have no grounds to doubt the contents of the photos that have been published," Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said, according to Reuters.
The U.N. Security Council added their voice to the outrage on Friday, and called on all countries to cooperate with China and Norway to help bring those responsible for the killings to justice.