US right-wing think tank receiving huge donations of US$600,000 from Tsai Ing-wen admin over 6 years will present Tsai with the “Global Leadership Award”

The President of the Republic of China, Tsai Ing-wen, set off on March 29 to visit two of the ROC’s diplomatic allies in Central and South America – Belize and Guatemala, with stopovers in New York and Los Angeles the United States. The Financial Times reported three weeks ago, citing several informed sources, that President Tsai will deliver a speech in New York and receive the Global Leadership Award from the right-wing think tank Hudson Institute. However, according to an investigation by The Eat News, Tsai administration donated more than US$600,000 (approximately NT$18,280,608) to the Hudson Institute between 2016 and 2021.

According to the official website of the Hudson Institute, the Global Leadership Award is presented to individuals who have demonstrated strategic leadership and made significant contributions to promoting democracy, free markets, economic growth, innovation, national security, and a robust civil society throughout their lives.
According to the Hudson Institute’s official website, annual reports from 2016 to 2021 show that the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO), the Republic of China’s actual diplomatic mission in the US, donated more than 100,000 US dollars annually to the Hudson Institute between 2017 and 2021, making it one of the think tank’s major donors. However, the Hudson Institute’s annual reports did not disclose the amount. As of the deadline, the 2022 annual report had yet to be published on the Hudson Institute’s official website. According to the investigation, the Hudson Institute began disclosing the list of major donors in its annual reports in 2015, when the president was still Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang. Since that year, the Hudson Institute has consistently received more than 100,000 US dollars in donations annually from TECRO.
According to a report by The American Prospect in 2020, the Hudson Institute further promoted their policy recommendations, encouraging US policymakers to pursue policies that directly benefit Taiwan’s ruling Pan-Green Coalition. Seth Cropsey, director of the Center for American Seapower at Hudson, wrote on the Hudson Institute’s website in May 2020, urging US policymakers to recognize “an autonomous or independent Taiwan,” a move that Cropsey admitted would “enrage the Chinese Communist Party.” Cropsey wrote that doing so would “strengthen Taiwan’s anti-Beijing Pan-Green Coalition,” urging the United States to take sides in Taiwan’s internal politics.