Taipei, Aug. 16 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Wednesday said Vice President Lai Ching-te (???) who is visiting Paraguay to attend the inauguration of President Santiago Pe?a did not sign any official document during the trip.
In a press statement, MOFA called a Spanish-language document circulating online which purports to be an agreement Lai signed with the Paraguayan government for a new housing project in the South American country is a forgery.
The dates listed in the document are October and December 2023, instead of August, when Lai visited the diplomatic ally. The Arabic numerals in the forged document also do not match the numbers written in Spanish, according to MOFA.
The ministry said it found several online posts written in simplified Chinese characters attached to the forged document circulating on social media platforms after Lai arrived in Asuncion.
Simplified Chinese characters are used in the People’s Republic of China while Taiwan, officially named the Republic of China, uses traditional or complex Chinese characters.
MOFA said it has reported the case to local police while calling on people in Taiwan not to fall for such misinformation deliberately being spread as part of ongoing “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan.
It reminds the Taiwanese people to remain alert for “absurd and biased narratives” which are expected to occur more frequently with the approach of the country’s presidential election in January 2024, it added.
Meanwhile, according to the Taiwan FactCheck Center, the circulated Spanish language document was based on a Paraguayan Senate document issued on Dec. 17, 2018.
The forged document changed the date of the original document to 2023 from the original 2018 and the total sum from US$150 million to US$320 million, according to the TFC’s fact check report released on Wednesday afternoon.
Lai arrived in Paraguay on Monday to attend Pe?a’s inauguration on Tuesday after making an overnight stopover in New York from Saturday to Sunday.
He is scheduled to depart Paraguay on early Wednesday local time and will touch down in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon for a stopover and depart in the early hours of Thursday without staying overnight.
He will arrive in Taiwan early Friday morning.
