The Wall Street Journal said in a statement on its Chinese website Monday that it had made a "number mistake" in a story about Cameroon's debt issue with China, after the story had been widely doubted by domestic media for almost a week.

The original story, which was published on the Chinese version of the Wall Street Journal on January 21, reported that China had written off almost $5.2 billion from Cameroon's debt. 

The story was translated from Dow Jones newswires, according to a note at the bottom of the story.

That number, compared with the African country's GDP of $34.8 billion in 2017, was quite shocking to many people who read the story.

The US-based daily business newspaper said in the statement, which was linked to an updated story, that the number should have been $78 million - around 65.6 times less than the $5.2 billion in its original story.