On May 1, the Dominican Republic and China established diplomatic relations. The move by the Dominican government under President Danilo Medina included breaking ties with Taiwan after a 70 year-old relationship.

On the eve of the announcement, Xinhua News, the Chinese government official organ, published a “Backgrounder: A brief introduction of the Dominican Republic” that spread many misconceptions about the Dominican Republic. The brief article signed by “ZX” indicates a lack of knowledge about the Caribbean country and Latin America as a whole. The Xinhua “introduction” offers no in-depth analysis to Chinese readers. In fact, it spreads and reproduces old falsehoods about a new friend nation that could lead to misconceptions about Dominican society and its people. We found several errors that we hope Xinhua editors will verify in the future.

XINHUA: The South American country was originally the native land of the American-Indians and its capital Santo Domingo, which was built by Spanish colonists in 1496, was the first permanent European settlement in the Americas.

This is quite inaccurate information that anyone can verify by just looking at a world map. First, the Dominican Republic is a Caribbean country—as the author states in the preceding paragraph — and also a Latin American nation.