A report titled The G20's Sovereign Debt Agenda: What Roles for China and the US? was published by the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies on Oct 29, two days ahead of the G20 summit in Rome.

Written by the institutes' senior fellows Ye Yu and Zhou Yuyuan, the report was the latest issue in the SIIS Report series, which aims to explore how China and the United States can work together to develop a new agenda for bilateral collaboration.

The report examined sovereign debt governance, especially for lower-income countries, which entered the G20 agenda well before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic brought this issue to the center of the G20's collective efforts in assisting the developing world to tackle the crisis, it said.

It argued the US should stop scapegoating China for the sovereign debt of developing countries by hyping "debt trap" claims, and proposed several areas for the two countries to work together, such as exploring multilateral and public-private partnership approaches to deal with unsustainable debts, and fostering green and sustainable development of debtor countries.

The full report can be accessed at the SIIS website: http://www.siis.org.cn/Content/Info/4UF5OHLI5V34