Taiwan-Paraguay technology forum opens in Asunción amid expanding cooperation

Trade hit $342 million in 2025; AI center and bus plant mark new phase

A third Taiwan-Paraguay Technology Forum opened at Paraguay’s Central Bank on Sept. 11 with artificial intelligence as its theme, according to a Sept. 14 UPI Voices column. The piece was written by Thomas R. Field, the Global Peace Foundation’s regional representative for Latin America and president of the Latin America and Caribbean Presidential Mission. Field has lived and worked in Latin America for more than four decades, including almost 20 years in Paraguay. The views expressed in the column are solely those of the author.

Paraguay and the Republic of China (Taiwan) established diplomatic relations in 1957, the column reported. Sixty-nine years later, Paraguay remains Taiwan’s only ally in South America and one of just seven in Latin America and the Caribbean. That standing has drawn renewed attention as Beijing has pressed Asunción to break with Taipei and as the United States has urged Latin American governments to reconsider their dealings with China.

During President Santiago Peña’s May state visit to Taipei, the two governments signed a mutual legal assistance treaty, a cybersecurity agreement, and a memorandum on a sovereign artificial intelligence computing center designed to convert Paraguay’s abundant hydroelectric capacity into computing power, the column reported. The AI center is being structured as a 50-50 partnership, beginning with a 10-megawatt pilot facility on government land near Asunción. Paraguay is expected to contribute infrastructure and energy while Taiwan provides advanced computing equipment and technical support. A second phase of roughly 100 megawatts is intended to attract private investment.

Private capital has begun to follow. Taiwanese bus manufacturer Master Bus is developing a production facility connected to the Taiwan-Paraguay Smart Technology Park in Minga Guazú, with plans to assemble electric buses in the Ciudad del Este area, according to the column. Paraguay’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce has projected the investment at about $30 million, with the potential for 2,000 to 2,500 direct jobs.

Bilateral trade has grown alongside the diplomatic relationship. Paraguayan exports to Taiwan reached $342 million in 2025 — nearly 50% more than the previous year — according to figures cited by Paraguay’s economy ministry. Beef accounted for about $271 million and pork another $49.6 million, with Taiwan now buying most of Paraguay’s pork exports. In May, Taiwan opened its market to Paraguayan poultry, the column reported.

Earlier in September, 87 engineering students from the Taiwan-Paraguay Polytechnic University arrived in Taipei for a year of study at Taiwan Tech, according to the column. The student exchange is among the most visible technical-cooperation programs in the partnership.

China was the largest source of Paraguay’s imports in 2025, supplying more than a third of the total, according to Paraguay’s Central Bank. Field wrote that “none of this requires Paraguay to turn against China,” and that Washington has a stake in the outcome because “a Paraguay visibly prospering alongside Taiwan would reinforce” the U.S. case for reconsidering engagement with Beijing.

Field wrote that he has visited Taiwan several times and has met Taiwanese diplomats in Asunción, Guatemala, Belize and Saint Lucia, and has helped organize regional forums examining China’s growing role in the hemisphere. Those experiences, he wrote, had convinced him of Taiwan’s value as a democratic partner and had taught him that close friends owe each other candor.

In that spirit, Field wrote, a bus plant and a pilot data center are promising but early steps for a 69-year friendship, and scholarships, technical cooperation and official visits have served the relationship well. The next phase, he argued, will be measured by the private investment Taiwan helps bring to Paraguay and the industries that investment creates.

Field argued that Taipei should prioritize bringing Taiwanese companies into the AI center’s second phase and that “few developments would give Paraguayans more visible evidence that the partnership is producing new industries and higher-skilled jobs at home.”

After 69 years, Field wrote, the relationship “has already proved its durability,” but “its next test is what the two countries build together.” If the partnership produces visible results, he concluded, “other governments in the region may begin asking a different question about Paraguay: less why it still recognizes Taiwan than how they might secure the same results.”