It’s been over a year since the Chengdu Worldcon won the 2023 site selection contest and voters have never heard from the committee. In contrast, Glasgow 2024 emailed members less than three weeks after winning at Chicon 8.
WHERE IS PR#1? Early in December at Smofcon 38, Chengdu Worldcon co-chair Ben Yalow finished his presentation by saying, “Those of you who have worked me with me through many, many decades are aware of the fact that I am of the sort of person who believes that the purpose of silver linings is to bring dark clouds with them.” That sentiment perfectly suits the leadership of a committee that embodies Zeno’s Paradox. Yalow said in September at Chicon 8 that a draft of PR#1 would be ready “within another few days” but at Smofcon, he said that members haven’t gotten PR#1 yet because Chengdu “has not completely finalized hotel arrangements,” nor will they receive it “until everything is locked in to the satisfaction of people who get very nervous.”
Whether the convention will have enough money is evidently the source of that anxiety. Yalow said at Smofcon, “People may or may not realize membership income is a trivial part of this Worldcon, unlike every other Worldcon in the past several decades, we are totally dependent on sponsorships and we are working with various corporate and governmental entities to get sponsorships locked down. Until we get the amount of those dollars and a lot of amounts locked down plans are still very very very much up in the air” and Yalow said securing these sponsorships has been “a significant source of delay.”
2025 SITE SELECTION AND 2023 HUGO VOTING. Questioned about Chengdu’s readiness to run site selection for 2025, Yalow used the committee’s failure to issue PR#1 to justify vague answers about their preparation to carry out basic functions in two major areas. Yalow said, “Until we can get PR1 out we are reluctant to put other specific schedules in. However, we recognize that there are some deadlines that are locked in from either the Constitution or the necessary administration of things. We know that the filing deadline for site selection is 180 days before the Worldcon. There is no choice on hitting that deadline.”
As for the Hugos, Yalow said: “…In order to make the Hugos work we really need to open things over the next couple of months. You do not have a hard deadline there but since, as people are aware, a number of us have been involved in Hugo Administration in the past — specifically Dave [McCarty] has done it several times, I’ve been on the subcommittee several times — we know what the Hugo schedule has to look like. So those are things that are driving. Yet on the other hand we are not going to wait for a progress report to get those kinds of questions and mailings done.”
McCarty, who was sitting next to Yalow during Chengdu’s presentation, added: “Our goal is to have online nominations open by the end of January. The tentative schedule for nomination is January for as much as we have an open February and all of March for nomination, and locked in dates for other things behind.
“Probably the web will come online before PR2 with a paper nominating ballot comes out. The paper nominating ballot will come out in sufficient time to get things in for the end of March.”
Later on, McCarty said members could expect the committee to send them an email with Hugo voting information: “Regarding Hugo voting… there should be an email blast going out to people with all the information about nominating and your information about logging into the website. That should go out slightly before the website opens up for people to nominate, so that should be sometime in mid-January. There’s likely to be an email from Chicon 8 about stuff to remind folks about the upcoming Chengdu [Worldcon] and participating as well. This happens I believe slightly even before that, so there’s a couple of different blasts that we’ll be sending out [about] nominating information to people coming up in the next six weeks or so.”
BUSINESS MEETING. The Smofcon audience, trying to digest what had been said, wondered if Chengdu was prepared to carry out another constitutional requirement, asking “Do you have any contingency plans for the situations where you cannot secure sponsorships or have your convention or do anything else like hold the business meeting?”
Yalow answered, “It takes 12 people to hold a business meeting. Holding a business meeting is not an issue. We will comply with all of the requirements in the constitution. That’s easy to do. That doesn’t require a lot of sponsorship.”
One of the tribal divisions among conrunners is between those who prioritize the convenience of the committee and those who prioritize serving the members (which is not just more work but involves sharing more information publicly and addressing criticism in a productive way). The 2023 site selection voters want to be acknowledged as part of a Worldcon community. Too bad that has not been convenient for the Chengdu Worldcon committee which has chosen to spend a year perfecting their first “progress” report instead of doing a simple act of community-building by contacting its members.
Video of the 2023 Worldcon (Chengdu) Presentation at SMOFCon 38 on December 3 is available at the link. There are also videos of the other presentations online, including the one from Glasgow 2024.
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Worldcon goes Fyre Festival.
Hear, hear. #mayweliveininterestingtimesNOT
Is there still a 12/31 deadline to buy membership to nominate in Hugos? Nothing on their web page or social media. Can’t buy a membership except for wiring funds to ‘a collaborator’.
Click
@Phoenix: It was moved back to 31 January.
Hugos, site selection, and business meeting are the minimum requisites of a Worldcon, and so far the Chengdu con has shown no indication that they are prepared to accomplish even these. Perhaps someone could direct me to the part of the Chengdu bid materials where it was stated that the primary funding mechanism for Worldcon 2022 was going to be ‘sponsorships’ rather than ‘memberships’.
It will be an interesting WorldCon to observe from a distance. A great, safe distance.
This will sound cynical, but it sounds like lining up government and corporate sponsors is a priority because the CPP has decided that this Worldcon will be a propaganda campaign for the PRC. So those government and corporate interests have the most say in what’s going on, no matter what anyone else says.
Even with minimal sponsorship, it ought to be possible to provide a ball-pit of a reasonable size.
@Iain–This sounds all too likely. Safety concerns aside, I am very glad to not be attending Chengdu.
This sounds an awful lot to me like “We need to get government sign-off before we can do anything. We have no idea how long it’s going to take to get government sign-off, and have zero way to influence that. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope it’s not too late!”
It feels odd to me that a lot of comments about Chengdu make it sound like the problem is an inept con committee, when my guess would be that the skill level of the con committee is incredibly irrelevant to this situation. Treating this like just another Worldcon is very strange to me.
The WSFS voted* for a Chinese Worldcon. It’s getting a Chinese Worldcon, with everything that entails. This isn’t some mysterious unforeseeable surprise; this is exactly what they voted* for.
(* I mean, as long as we count the 1591 Chinese votes that gave a name but didn’t even bother to list a mailing address. There’s obviously some magical barrier to countries/organizations just making up people and essentially renting Worldcon’s name from WSFS for a year, right?)
If they dont need membership incoome, I hope Discon doesnt pass on the voting fees, and instead gives it to charity. I want some good to come out of this disaster
I’m hopeful the China reopening, which happened after this report, will help solve a lot of problems. Get a bunch of memberships in, relieve financial pressure on hotels.
I agree with Mike though that the lack of communication is particularly bad. Whatever problems they have, the community can help solve unless they keep it secret
bookworm1398 says I’m hopeful the China reopening, which happened after this report, will help solve a lot of problems. Get a bunch of memberships in, relieve financial pressure on hotels.
China reopening? What are you talking about? The US government just slapped a Covid test requirement on each and every individual coming from China. That’s how concerned our government is.
It’s predicted by epidemiologists hat the current China COVID wave will kill in excess of one million people.
Sure China reopening.
I appreciate Ben’s informing us, but I feel like I’m still missing a lot. Was Chengdu intending from the beginning to fund the convention primarily through sponsorships? That would explain why they did not charge site selection voters for upgrading to attending. But why didn’t they anticipate that getting sponsorships could be difficult? That seems like it should have been obvious.
@Cat Eldridge
China is apparently giving up on trying to stop the virus. That’s “re-opening” – of a sort. Not any kind that we need, though.
P J Evans says China is apparently giving up on trying to stop the virus. That’s “re-opening” – of a sort. Not any kind that we need, though.
Precisely.
I was in one country that was involved in a civil war and I fully expect all authoritarian governments to lie to protect their assets..
Among the odd things here is that the Chengdu Worldcon previously had so much cash that they could afford to give Chicon 8 $57,000 of the pass-along funds they were entitled to. Or, at least, they thought they could afford it.
Joshua K.: I haven’t pursued the question again since my “Chengdu Worldcon Update” last month, but at that time when I asked Ben Yalow they still hadn’t moved the DisCon III site selection membership payments to U.S. accounts of their own. Therefore, it can be inferred that Chengdu must not have had someplace to park the $57,000 in pass-on funds they would have received and letting Chicon 8 use the money avoided that immediate problem. It’s now entirely possible that Chengdu will be entitled to passon-funds from Chicon 8, and the goodwill gesture might not represent a complete loss.
You know, I was willing to give Chengdu the benefit of the doubt. However, Chengdu has had a year to get sponsorships, get a functional website up and running, arrange for hotels and get out a progress report. However, so far all there is is a website that I at least cannot even log into. I have e-mail Chengdu about this, but haven’t even received a response so far.
Other Worldcons are already well into programming planning at this point in time and have issued two progress reports. On the Chengdu website, I can’t even find a space to apply for programming, at least not on the English version.
Also, Hugo nominations would normally open in two weeks or so. Currently, I’m not confident that Chengdu will be able to manage even that.
What this proves is that we need a mechanism in place for what happenes when a seated Worldcon goes incommunicado and cannot get their act together at all. We do have a mechanism in place, if a Worldcon declares that they are unable to host, namely that the other seated Worldcon takes over, but so far Chengdu is neither declaring they’re not able to host nor are they doing anything else.
We may also have to tighten rules regarding site selection votes, if there really were irregularities with some of the votes for Chengdu, i.e. requiring a valid street address and unique e-mail address in order to vote. As with the puppies, this is the sort of mess no one really anticipates, until it happens, but once it does we should make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Of course, any changes will probably have to submitted and voted upon in Glasgow and ratified in wherever 2025 will be (Seattle seems to be the only bid), because I strongly suspect that the Chengdu Business Meeting, if it happens at all, will be Ben Yarlow and eleven Chinese folks who may or may not know what is going on.
I have no idea how to even get a membership (if it’s possible at all). I would call that a failure of epic proportions.
@Cora Buhlert: Tightening up the rules for anything in WSFS is a long process, and I think there are good reasons for it. But one thing we learned from the puppy crisis is that Worldcon members will vote in large numbers, if and when they understand it is important. We need more participation in Site Selection voting, and also more attention to the bids and hard questions.
@Hampus Eckerman: I was minded to test your comment. I went to chengduworldcon.com. There was an orange button in the middle of the home page that said “Register”. I clicked it. So far, so good. But on the registration page, there was a popup that they’re still working on international credit card support, with a link to subscribe for updates.
@Cora Buhlert:
I’ve been thinking about this a bit. The problem is devising a constitutional responsibility that has to hit early enough that the plug can be pulled without too much harm (to my mind, this means before the immediately preceding Worldcon) but isn’t just pointless busywork.
What I would propose is something along the lines requiring that the Worldcon must provide its Site Selection voters their membership numbers within 180 days of being seated. Or within 90 days of the membership pass-along being complete. (I’m not picky about the details.) Basically, just a requirement that the newly seated Worldcon establishes some kind of minimal communication with its members. Failure to do so would result in automatic committee failure.
I note that Glasgow would be fully compliant with this requirement (I just double-checked my badge number on the Glasgow site right now) and Chicon would have been as well.
I would be happy to have a cannel where I can reach anyone. I want to become a supporting member but no answer until now. I can also say that every other worldcon did take my payment and it worked (sometimes it took some time, but it worked), this includs Glasgow by the way.
I watched the recording that Kevin Standlee did at Smofcon. (Thank you Kevin) and all I witnessed was gross incompetence and waffling that would do a politician proud. I knew or sensed some how that China was going to be funded through governmental entities. I thought they had their hotel all set up as they were showing a nice hotel for the convention. This is what happens when the floating Worldcon Committee cannot help Worldcon. By early next month we would normally have hotel information and bookings set up, at least one PR, a membership list or numbers, a committee list, a place to volunteer, a place to ask to get on panels. etc. etc. etc. This is gross incompetence.
I would hope that a by laws committee (since this is very complex and needs lawyers) could develop a by law to define a failed Worldcon, define when one is failing and have a method to put an emergency Worldcon into place. Even if it is a theater in Tonapah NV to hold the Hugos and a hotel room to hold the business meeting and counting for the site bid.
As far as I am concerned, the people who claim to be on the committee of Chengdu should have been doing preventative maintenance the minute the bid was won. That is setting up a pay system for memberships and more importantly, to me, voting fees for the next bid.
I can’t say I have much faith in Chengdu’s ability to be taking Hugo nominations in 31 days and site selection applications in 48 days when it has been unable to produce a PDF for 12 months. Can we add a minac requirement for Worldcons?
Discon’s role is that of a fiduciary of the site selection fees for the winning worldcon. They have no authority to disburse them for other purposes. Let’s not discuss diverting the site selection fees elsewhere at this point – I don’t want to give the Chengdu con any excuses for disenfranchising supporting members from Hugo nominations, Hugo voting or site selection voting. None of that has happened. Yet.
John B on December 30, 2022 at 4:12 pm said:
That would be wrong. The Advance Supporting memberships do not belong to DC3. it’s Chengdu’s money. DC3 would, I expect, love to give it to Chengdu in order to get the responsibility off of their hands, but they haven’t had any way to do so. I think that part, at least, may be getting fixed now that they have a legal entity with the US non-profit corporation Chengdu established.
Linda Robinett on December 31, 2022 at 7:17 am said:
WSFS has a constitution, not bylaws. And the closest thing we have to what you are suggesting is the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee, which mostly deals with technical matters.
See WSFS Constitution Section 2.6: Incapacity of Committees, which directs the other seated Worldcon to act when a committee is incapacitated (and some other things which are probably too late to invoke at this point). There is a similar Westercon rule, but it directs LASFS (owner of the Westercon service mark) to take action, which they did in 2021 when Westercon 73 Seattle declared itself incapable of holding the Westercon awarded to them.
Ah, there’s the rub. Both the Worldcon and Westercon governing documents require that someone representing the entity that was is running the convention throw in the sponge. There is no outside entity that can declare that the convention has defaulted. To whom would you want to give this power for Worldcon? The Mark Protection Committee, perhaps, given that it manages the WSFS service marks on behalf of WSFS? The other seated Worldcon? But creating such a rule then opens up a separate can of worms because anyone unhappy with any given Worldcon for any reason at all would start campaigning to have that committee unseated.
The Hugo Awards Ceremony is not a required event. A Worldcon could simply announce the results. The only required event a Worldcon must hold is the WSFS Business Meeting.
You’ve been in the largest public space in Tonopah in which such a gathering could be held, I think. (The Tonopah Convention Center main hall, fire marshal capacity 450 people if you open the air-wall and use the adjoining Buckboard Room. That’s why Westercon 74 had a membership cap, albeit that we didn’t have to invoke it.)
rcade on December 31, 2022 at 10:00 am said:
We obviously could do so, but who would you want to enforce it? The WSFS Constitution is not self-enforcing.
The easing of internal covid restrictions in China should help reduce uncertainty. I would imagine that was a major barrier to getting sponsorship agreements for an in-person con. However, that was also a wholly predictable problem.
Kevin Standlee wrote: “There is no outside entity that can declare that the convention has defaulted.”
I expect Ben Yalow, as co chair of Chengdu, could declare a default. There were on Worldcons in World War II. If Chengdu did default, could we declare no Worldcon in 2023, and have the 2023 site selection and Hugo Awards administered in 2024? Would there be a need to have a business meeting, if all ratifications were also automatically deferred to 2024?
This is definitely a sticky situation.
I was curious about this. I had hoped that my email address had been passed on when I did Site Selection voting for 2023. I confirmed today that apparently it had, as I was successful in getting an emailed link to that email address. The link worked, logging me in. My account shows that I have a WSFS membership, a 2023 Hugo voting right, a physical admission (which I am not currently planning on using), an online admission, and voting rights for 2025 site selection. I am hopeful about Hugo nomination and voting and 2025 site selection, and we’ll see what happens. At the very least, this is encouraging that they had my email address.
Just in: The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington has modeled the outbreak and forecasts 300,000 deaths by April 1, and 1.25 million by the end of the year — or as many as 1.6 million if there are no more mandates and restrictions, said institute epidemiologist Ali Mokdad.
Easing the restrictions means Covid is going to be a massive problem there for at least the next year according to the epidemiological experts.
Addin that every expert believes that China is lying and the Covid problem is far worse than what they are allowing us to know.
What surprised me most, after watching the whole video, was that the con has only about 4,000 members, plus a couple of hundred non-voting attendance packages, and nearly all of them got their membership as part of the voting process. Earlier, people were saying attendance at this con would dwarf all previous Worldcons.
The mention of “governmental entities” in the sponsorship process is indeed ominous, though not surprising. The evidence is growing, if more was needed, that the Chinese government will put a heavy hand on this convention.
I think that Goobergunch’s idea to have a certain time limit within which a seated Worldcon has to contact its existing members and issue a first progress report and if they fail at that, the other seated Worldcon takes over and decides what to do, is a good one. The time limit should be generous enough to allow for birthing pangs and minor issues. And note that Chengdu has had a year and have done fuck-all, which reeks of rank incompetence. And yes, the covid restrictions, the lifting thereof and the resulting covid surge is a huge issue, but CoNZealand had to deal with similar issues and did remarakbly well.
In the case of Chengdu, the logical alternative to take over would be the Winnipeg Nasfic, though a minimum viable Worldcon in Tonopah, Nevada would also do. However, if Chengdu don’t declare themselves unable to host, nothing can be done.
Also, while none of us are happy with Chengdu, the 2023 site selection vote was beset with problems from the start with two bids (Nice and Memphis) pulling out and the last minute Winnipeg bid basically campaigning on the basis of “We’re not Chengdu”.
Linda Deneroff on December 31, 2022 at 11:19 am said:
Ben explicitly told me at SMOFCon that he was not someone who could speak for the convention’s legal entity for that purpose.
There were no ongoing matters like the Hugo Awards and the ratification of business passed on back in 1942, so having Worldcon 4 (the only seated Worldcon, and thus in effect the managers of WSFS) delaying itself didn’t cause any knock-on effects. The current structure of WSFS assumes that there is always a Worldcon every year, and that the Hugo Awards happen every year. If you cancel the 2023 Worldcon without making any provisions for the things that the WSFS rules say have to happen every year, the following things happen:
There are no 2023 Hugo Awards.
All business passed on to the 2023 WSFS Business Meeting fails, and nobody gets elected to the WSFS Mark Protection Committee.
The 2025 Worldcon Site Selection doesn’t happen.
Although it’s not explicit in the rules, I think the 2024 Worldcon could hold a 2025 Worldcon Site Selection election, thus holding two elections in the same year. Possibly the same logic applies to them administering two sets of Hugo Awards (2023 and 2024).
Having all of the Business Passed On fail ratification is not a catastrophe, although it means all of the proponents of pending changes have to start over.
The WSFS MPC would probably appoint the members whose terms expire in 2023 to serve ad interim until the next election, at which time there would be six seats up for a vote. This is exactly what happened at the 2021 Worldcon because the 2020 Business Meeting didn’t elect MPC members.
So having a single Worldcon simply dissolve without admitting that they’re incapable of doing their job doesn’t wreck WSFS entirely, although it makes things complicated for their successors.
Kevin,
Hypothetically, if disaster occurs and there are no 2023 Hugos, would the 2024 Hugos then represent two years worth of eligibility, or would it take until 2048 for 2023 works to be recognized with a Retro Hugos?
Kevin Standlee:
I would give it to the following Worldcon, i.e Glasgow. And I think one defining minimirequierement for them to be able to do so would be that people couldn’t buy memberships to get rights to noninate for Hugo’s. And have special section how that should be handled.
I wrote: “I expect Ben Yalow, as co chair of Chengdu, could declare a default.”
Kevin Standlee replied: “Ben explicitly told me at SMOFCon that he was not someone who could speak for the convention’s legal entity for that purpose.”
Ben isn’t on the U.S. corporation, but I suspect that one of the corporate members (Randall Shepherd?) might be able to speak to the situation.
If it happens, the Chengdu Worldcon will be like the 1936 Olympics. Lukyanenko is still GOH, for crying out loud, and there’s zero communication to the paid membership. You will see the PRCs favorite sycophants showered with banquets, concubines and cash when the time arrives, under the spotlights of a futuristic venue.
Minx says You will see the PRCs favorite sycophants showered with banquets, concubines and cash when the time arrives, under the spotlights of a futuristic venue.
Huh? To quote Wot in A Knight’s Tale, “Wot?” Are yiu being sarcastic? I hope so. Otherwise what the frell are you talking about?
@Mlex
The 1936 Olympics were a lot better organised than this mess.
It will be a government sanctioned and sponsored event, meant to send a political message from the host country to the world, despite being held within the context of a global organization that is not meant for that purpose. I hope that helps clarify.
Mlex says It will be a government sanctioned and sponsored event, meant to send a political message from the host country to the world, despite being held within the context of a global organization that is not meant for that purpose. I hope that helps clarify.
No, it doesn’t. You are making the assumption that the Chinese government gives a damn about this con. That’s an unproven assumption at that point.
(Yes local Party officials keep track of everything but that doesn’t mean that they are paying particular interest to one organisation.)
It might be, it might not be. But we have no proof at this point that any governmental organisation in China is involved in this Worldcon, period.
I stand by my prediction. I don’t believe that a small, under the radar event, where the diversity of fans from around the world can attend and be free to express themselves will be tolerated. Only a sanctioned event will be held. And the government is paying very close attention! If anything, the government agencies have been increasingly involved in sf cons in China, at least since 2017. I don’t know what you mean by proof. It’s written about widely. Here are a few facts translated directly from Chinese, with links to the original text.
What do you think the Chengdu Worldcon will be like, then?
Ok mlex, I give. The article that you linked to offers absolutely no proof of governmental involvement in Cons, but you obviously want to have a conspiracy frsmr of mind about this, so go ahead and do so.
Me, I’ll wait, as always, for proof that the government, locally or otherwise, is actually going to take an interest here. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.
no, I’m just pointing out that it is not only appearance of involvement in these cons, but active organization to promote them that the PRC government is engaged in. You can see it as benign, as Andrew Liptak has in his blog.
it certainly is true that the CAST China Association for Science and Technology bills itself as “non-governmental” and yet on their website they also describe themselves as a “bridge that links the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government to the country’s science and technology community.”
So make what you want of that.
CAST was the main sponsor of the 2020 con held in Beijing. It says so right on their official poster. and the government of Shijingshan District in Beijing was wildly enthusiastic about their direct involvement. For example “China Science Fiction Convention 2020 kicks off in Beijing” (People’s Daily) 09:29, November 06, 2020
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/1106/c90000-9777332.html
As for the Science Fiction Growth Foundation, mentioned in my article, they sponsor a bunch of cool events, primarily in Shenzhen. They are a “public” foundation, so I think they have somewhat less direct oversight from the government.
The Chengdu Worldcon will not be ignored by the Chinese government as a minor conference of no concern to them. They will take an active role in it, as they have shown over years of steadily increasing hands-on policies to grow a domestic SF industry and at the same time have editorial control. Why would they have issued a central government policy on SF film, if they don’t want to get involved?
I think it would be really cool for Crystal Huff, Neil Clarke, or others who were involved in the actual cons in recent years to chime in on this topic.
Author Wu Xiankui gave a speech at the 5th China (Chengdu) International Science Fiction Convention in 2019 pushing for a Chinese bid for the 2023 Worldcon. Wu holds a political office in the Committee of Culture, History and Study of the provincial branch of the People’s Political Consultative Conference.
The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, referred to as the CPPCC and the CPPCC for short, is the united front organization under the multi-party cooperation and political consultation system led by the Communist Party of China…
The General Regulations of the Constitution of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which was revised in 2000, states: “All activities of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference are based on the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China… Units and individuals participating in the National Committee or Local Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference have the obligation to abide by and implement this charter. “
Article 3: “The National Committee and Local Committees of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference implement the strategy of administering the country according to law, publicize and implement the country’s constitution, laws, regulations and various guidelines and policies”
Article 11: “The National Committee and Local Committees of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference publicize and participate in the implementation of the country’s guidelines and policies for the unification of the motherland, and actively carry out contacts with Taiwan compatriots and people from all walks of life, and promote the realization of the great cause of reunification of the motherland. Contact and solidarity with compatriots in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and compatriots in Macao Special Administrative Region , encourage them to contribute to maintaining the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and Macao, and to building the motherland and reunifying the motherland. ”
Article 16: “The National Committee and the Local Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference publicize and assist in the implementation of the country’s foreign policy”
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/Chinese-People's-Political-Consultative-Conference
Science Fiction World (previously reported as a sponsor/endorser of the Chengdu bid) is a magazine which has existed since 1979. In 2010, the Science Fiction World editor was removed from his position by the Sichuan Science and Technology Association.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science-Fiction-World
The Sichuan Science and Technology Association also runs the China International Science Fiction Conference, which provided free vacation trips for a bunch of Worldcon conrunners in 2019.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/China-International-Science-Fiction-Conference
The Sichuan Science and Technology Association (“Sichuan Science Association”) is a local organization organized by the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and affiliated to the China Science and Technology Association. Established in November 1958.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan-Science-and-Technology-Association
The Chinese government has been deeply involved in the Chengdu Worldcon bid since its inception, and it is going to be behind the running of Worldcon just as it is behind the running of the China International Science Fiction Conference.
If both the Chinese authorities and fandom wanted the Worldcon to be a showcase to the west, they are doing a dreadful job. Their GOH choice and handling of foreign members has alienated us all, and their endless broken promises suggests that they will be unable to organise the Hugos, both packet and voting, and that there will be no virtual event with 2-way communication, Only a handful of foreigners will attend, and the rest of us might get a few videos on YouTube and a state approved Souvenir Book. The WSFS meeting would be Ben+locals, and if a site is selected for 2025, I doubt it will be done by foreigners.
Rather than raising the profile of China and Chinese fandom, they are doing it active harm.
The question of whether the Chinese government will take a special interest in the con is a distraction. If it happens, it will be a public event in China. As such, the government will take an interest in how it’s run and what is said there. Ben’s mention of “governmental entities” affecting the badly needed sponsorships confirms that.
The Chinese concom members know that if things happen which the government doesn’t like, they’ll experience bad, though possibly subtle, consequences. Will there be a panel on Our Lady of the Artilects and what it says about China? Not a chance. A Worldcon is supposed to be a place where people can freely discuss controversial topics. This one won’t be.