China’s recently published COVID-19 white paper was intended to clear up confusion about Beijing’s efforts to contain the outbreak and what it’s doing to support other countries, including economic assistance.

And it’s on the issue of debt relief, in particular, that a lot of people, including journalists and scholars, appear to be confused. The stand-alone phrase that China “has so far announced the suspension of debt repayments from 77 developing countries” turned out to be highly misleading as a lot of people mistook that to mean that China would halt repayments of its bilateral loans. Which is, of course, not accurate.