Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te has arrived in Paraguay after a stopover in New York to attend the inauguration of new Paraguayan President Santiago Peña on Tuesday.

Lai on Monday met with outgoing President Mario Abdo Benítez, who believed that bilateral relations should be further strengthened because of shared values of democracy.

He said that the bilateral also shared values for freedom and human rights, according to a statement issued by Lai’s office in Taipei on Tuesday.

Lai thanked Benítez for his tireless support for Taiwan in international arenas, according to a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

He said Paraguay is one of the 13 countries maintaining official diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Lai later met with Peña, who vowed to maintain official ties with Taiwan and promote collaboration.

Access24 reports that Lai would leave Asunción on Wednesday for San Francisco, before returning to Taipei on Thursday.

China has since mid-July warned against Lai’s planned  U.S, stopovers.

On Saturday, when Lai began his trip, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched three-day-long military exercises in the East China Sea.

Meanwhile, in Taipei, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that it saw no reason for China to overreact to the vice president’s stopovers in the U.S. because such visits had been happening for years.

If Beijing insisted to escalate provocation because of such stopovers, “then it’s China, not Taiwan or the U.S., that undermines regional peace and stability,” spokesman Jeff Liu told a news conference.