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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Yes, I agree with JJ, John, and Gary, and appreciate the detailed resume of govt involvement that JJ provided. My interest in the Chinese cons has been hopeful right up until the Worldcon bid, as I have written about in various ways on my blog for a number of years. Also, I have been following the industry involvement in SF cons based on my contacts with Dr. Wu Yan, who is a wonderful person, and Fritz Demopoulos who organized several Melon Cons in Hong Kong.
The worldcon bid, however, seemed to be strange to me because it comes at a very unfavorable moment. Exactly as John said, the con will not advance the best interests of Chinese fandom and it makes me question what the real motivation for the bid was about.
Ben said that while they hope to have electronic voting for site selection, it required every submitted bid to agree to it. I do hope that Seattle don’t file only to find that a Chinese bid files but doesn’t give permission, and a paper only vote occurs with most of the membership (and nearly all the international membership) disenfranchised. While I think different Chinese fangroups have the right to bid , I’d not want one to win with 100 votes to 10.
Personally, I suspect that the Chinese Communist Party and their organisations lost interest in this Worldcon, which they initially wanted very much, leaving the con-runners high and dry without funding or support.
I expected Chengdu to put on a great show, even if it looks very different from western Worldcons and even if a propaganda element would of course be present. What I did not expect them to be is completely incompetent to the point that they can’t even fulfill basic functions required of them.
It’s unlikely that I will travel to Chengdu, but I at least want to be able to log into their website, nominate and vote for the Hugos and vote in site selection. If they actually have a virtual component, I would even take part. And yes, you can apparently buy memberships, but only via Chinese payment systems no one in the West uses, which is flat out ridiculous.
Plus, any attempt to communicate with Chengdu is like shouting into the void. I can’t log into their website and they don’t respond to e-mails.
I think Cora is right on the money.
Marshall Ryan Maresca on December 31, 2022 at 2:00 pm said:
If you look only at the written rules, then it would be the latter. WSFS rules do not contemplate a situation where a Worldcon completely defaults without at least saying that they’ve done so, which triggers the Section 2.6 provisions. And it takes at least two years to change those rules. There is no executive that can override WSFS’s own rules. The only clear-cut way you can get around this would be if the seated Worldcon declared itself to have defaulted, at which point Section 2.6 gives emergency authority to the other seated Worldcon to clean up the mess.
(Note that if a Worldcon calls a self-default more than a year in advance, then the WSFS Business Meeting has the first call on trying to sort, but in the case being discussed, this doesn’t apply, so I’m ignoring all of those cases here.)
Hampus Eckerman on December 31, 2022 at 2:55 pm said:
So are you saying that Worldcon N+1 can declare their predecessor in default and make alternative arrangements, even if Worldcon N says, “No, we’re not in default, go away.” I read what your saying about a minimum requirement for declaring a default, but what if Worldcon N says “No”? I’m not even sure what legal court would have jurisdiction over the inevitable lawsuits. You’d likely end up with dueling Worldcons.
I’m not being sarcastic. Imaging all of the various reasons that people erupt in anger about every Worldcon these days. What happens when a Worldcon declares their predecessor in default for reasons you personally don’t consider right and proper? Here’s a specific case: What if DC3’s Raytheon sponsorship was announced months in advance, rather than having first appeared at the convention? Don’t you think there would have been a bunch of people demanding that the committee be stripped of its Worldcon for Reasons?
Personally, I don’t think giving a Worldcon committee that kind of authority over its predecessor is a good idea. In my opinion, most Worldcons aren’t particularly interested in the welfare of their predecessors or successors. What would stop a Worldcon committee from deciding to unseat their predecessor because they think it’s just dandy to hold two Worldcons in a row, for example?
In general, I do not trust individual Worldcon committee to make decisions that are in the best interest of Worldcon as an ongoing convention. Worldcon committees are, by their nature, focused on a single event, with consideration of the World Science Fiction Society being mostly irrelevant.
That’s precisely why we do need exact criteria for when a Worldcon can be declared in default, if they do not default themselves. And no, “We don’t like this sponsor or this GoH or the chair or the program has 97 panels on H.P. Lovecraft” should not be a valid reason, only signs – of which there are several with Chengdu – that a seated Worldcon won’t be able to fulfil even its most basic duties.
The best mechanism would probably be to give a seated Worldcon a (fairly generous) amount of time to set up a functional website, where people can buy memberships with internationally common payment systems, to issue a first progress report and contact the existing membership, neither of which Chengdu has managed to do so far. If a seated Worldcon fails to do this by date X and does not respond to questions or at least explain the reason behind their failure to fulfil those minimum requirements, they would be considered automatically in default and the other seated Worldcon would take over.
Kevin Standlee:
No, and I think you are to rigid in your thinking here. I honestly do not care if Chengdu runs a Worldcon or not at this moment. I care about the Hugo’s and somewhat about the business meeting and site selection. And I think that given minimum requirements such as people being able to get a membership before nominations are due, the constitution of WSFS should be able to say:
“If Worldcon XX has not been able to handle its obligations according to YY, it has no longer the rights to host the Hugo’s for year ZZ. This right instead goes to the following Worldcon. They may handle it in the following ways…”
I.e I do not care about if an organization is in default or if a makeshift convention will be able to be puzzled together at this time. They can continue with that for all I care and perhaps they will get something together. But I want to make sure that whatever happens, there is some way to handle the possible failure to host the Hugo’s, business meeting and site selection.
Do you see the same problem with the following Worldcon getting the rights to handle them if the first should default from its obligations?
Hampus Eckerman: A problem — to be solved, not one that derails the train — is funding the Hugo-related and any other expenses that come with the rescue Worldcon’s responsibilities, since the defaulting Worldcon will be the one that received the membership money. Right now it seems to be assumed the rescue con will be stuck with those expenses. Perhaps crowdfunding would be needed. The rescue Worldcon will, of course, also have to figure out who’s a default Worldcon member for purposes of Hugo/site selection voting, which is something commenters have already brought up.
Hampus Eckerman on January 1, 2023 at 5:09 pm said:
In that case, why not just say you want an organization independent of any Worldcon committee that does those things, rather than leaving it up to individual Worldcons to carry out those functions?
Linda Deneroff on December 31, 2022 at 4:10 pm said:
That US corporation is not the entity that was awarded the right to host the 2023 Worldcon, and therefore it is not the entity that can declare the 2023 Worldcon in default. Only someone officially authorized to speak on behalf of the entity named on Chengdu’s legal entity as named on it’s filing document filed with DisCon III (the Chengdu Science Fiction Society) can speak authoritatively on this subject.
Hampus Eckerman on January 1, 2023 at 5:09 pm said:
So do I. But you are saying that the same entity that would be responsible for taking over those functions should be the one making the determination of whether or not they should take over those functions. That seems like a fundamental conflict of interest to me. How can the following year’s Worldcon be an impartial judge of whether a default has occurred if they are also the ones who would have to take over those functions? And what if they declare a default but you disagree with their decision?
Kevin Standlee:
Because the individual Worldcon is doing many things anyhow. They are already handling memberships. They are already preparing software for Hugo nominations for hosting, have already selected administrators and so on. They are already an active and quite large group of people who have regular meetups. Sure, you could have an independent organization making the decision of default instead, if you think that would be more impartial.
Mike Glyer:
Agree. And that is why I would like the constitution to give specific options for different possibilities to handle this. It has already been mentioned administrating two years Hugo Awards the same year as an option. But if the convention would think it possible to host their nomination software beforehand and have a separate award show, the constitution would need to show that even memberships bought a latter time would in this emergency case give nomination rights
I can’t believe I’m hearing so many hoping so fervently for a Worldcon to fail. China has been in the throes of a ginormous covid wave (Google it). Worldcons run by (how can I put this) committees with a more traditional composition got presumptions of good fairth and lots of flexibility when under similar constraints. I agree with Mike’s editorial commment that they made a poor choice in their communications strategy. It’s their first time and fan culture is different there. Even if they end up having to make late in the day adjustments, why not support them in working it out?
Brian Z: I can’t believe I’m hearing so many hoping so fervently for a Worldcon to fail.
That’s not what you’re hearing. What you’re hearing is so many lamenting the fact that the Chengdu Worldcon has already failed.
At this point — when online registration is not available, when Hugo nominations are almost certainly not going to be functional until way too late in the timeline (if at all), when Site Selection is likely to be paper-only with no online payment methods outside China, thus disenfranchising all Worldcon members outside of China — the convention has already failed.
The only question now is what alternate methods can be implemented to make up for these failures, and that is what is being discussed here.
@Brian Z–Stop talking rot.
No one is hoping for a WorldCon to fail. We’re afraid it is failing, comprehensively. And we don’t have a mechanism for dealing with that, if the Chengdu concom doesn’t say so, officially.
Chengdu hasn’t done anything right after winning the bid. People outside China can’t buy memberships, the concom’s expectation of government and other sponsorships is failing, it took them forever to get a website up and what they’ve got up now is lacking really basic information, there’s no PR1, there’s no Hugo information. We don’t even know if they have a hotel–at a time when people expect to be making hotel reservations and travel plans.
And this is likely to be a more challenging WorldCon to travel to, due to covid as well as other considerations. Chengdu isn’t addressing that at all, right now, when they really need to be helping foreign fans understand what’s necessary.
They’ve done nothing that anyone can see about program, and that at best means no one from outside China, other than the Guests of Honor, is intended to be on program. But if that’s the plan, and I can see why it might seem sensible to them, they need to tell people.
People trying to communicate with them, either to ask questions or to offer help, are not getting responses.
This is not a “poor choice in their communication strategy.” It’s a failure to do any of the things they need to be doing or to have already done by now.
Please tell us what previous WorldCons have been this much of a mess this late, without doing either of reaching out for help, or communicating how they plan to fix things.
Brian Z:
I really miss the time you were banned from this site for your constant lying and spreading of misinformation. Your behaviour is as always thoroughly disgusting.
@Brian Z
No one here is hoping for Chengdu to fail. In fact, I was rooting for them to succeed in order to prove the naysayers wrong.
However, so far the Chengdu con com has proven itself to be completely and utterly incapable of fulfilling even the most basic functions. They still haven’t issued a progress report, their website does not work for many, i.e. I cannot even log in and get error messages in Chinese, it’s not possible to buy memberships except with certain Chinese-only payment systems, it’s not possible to book a hotel and there is no hotel information, there is no way to apply for programming. And if you try to e-mail them, it’s like shouting into the void, because they don’t reply to questions.
I have sympathy for the Chengdu con com, both as first-time Worldcon runners (though they do run a regular and apparently successful local con) and because of the covid and policy issues besetting China and Chengdu. But covid is not new and three Worldcons (CoNZealand, DisCon III and Chicon 8) have now had to deal with covid and still somehow managed to do their jobs. DisCon III also lost two chairs, one Hugo admin team, at least one social media team, at least one programming team and their hotel and still managed to put on a largely successful con. And if you e-mailed CoNZealand, DisCon III or Chicon 8 with questions (e.g. I also had issues logging into the DisCon III website), someone answered.
Since I can’t even log into their website, I have no idea how to get my Hugo nominations to Chengdu short of e-mailing them to the Hugo admin in person.
None of these failures people are complaining about are unreasonable expectations, they are basic things that even small cons somehow managed to get done.
Also, Chengdu’s failure will make it more difficult to any Worldcon bid from outside the traditional western con runner scene to win, because Chengdu will make people gun-shy to vote for a non-traditional bid. This will affect the bids from Egypt and Uganda and perhaps even the Israeli bid.
Update: Success. After umpteen attempts, I have finally managed to log into the Chengdu website and confirm that I indeed have a membership with Hugo voting and nomination rights.
Hampus Eckerman on January 1, 2023 at 7:04 pm said:
Which is precisely why they should not be the one making the decision. Their attention, rightly, is focused on running their convention. Having them have to make decisions for another Worldcon is not something that should be dividing their time.
Note that the rules about a default don’t say that the following Worldcon has to do all of the functions of the failed convention; it says that they are responsible for making alternative arrangements. Now they could decide to try and figure out how to do those things themselves, but it also means that they might be able to find another group that they think is capable of doing those things.
Here’s an example. Westercon 73 (Seattle) declared itself in default, which was administratively simple, in that the Westercon bylaws say that LASFS figures out what to do. LASFS “awarded” Westercon 73 to Loscon 47, which proceeded to do the two official functions, one of which was site selection. So far, so good.
The next problem: nobody filed a bid to host Westercon 75: not before the ballot deadline, not before the end of voting, and not by standing up at the Westercon Business Meeting at Westercon 73 (Loscon 47). That’s a different kind of default, but also one that the rules cover. Despite what some people with whom I spoke thought, we were not at the point where it’s LASFS’s decision. The Westercon 73 Business Meeting still had the right to award Westercon 75 to any committee pledging to hold the convention somewhere in western North America or Hawaii, and with no other restrictions. So after a period of informal discussion (a committee of the whole), the meeting voted to give Westercon 75 to a committee consisting of me and Lisa Hayes, who not coincidentally were the chair and (eventually) vice-char of Westercon 74 in Tonopah. They did not give the bid to SFSFC, Westercon 74’s parent organization, but to Lisa and me personally, just like Westercon 64’s meeting presented Westercon 68 to a committee of Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley personally when the site selection also failed to return a winner. Both of these cases were completely legal and within the scope of the written rules. And in both cases, the entities presented with the bids were not the ones who ran those conventions.
In Westercon 68’s case, Kevin & Andy approached SFSFC, which formed a standing committee and appointed the two of them to chair it. That means K&A transferred the authority given to them by the Westercon Business Meeting to SFSFC, which became the operating entity of Westercon 68.
In Westercon 75’s case, Lisa and I did not have a lot of enthusiasm for running two Westercons in a row, regardless of how much we like Tonopah. (We might have been able to persuade SFSFC to adopt us as a standing committee, but it was never our preferred option, but more of a last resort.) We spoke to people who had an interest in Westercon, and eventually agreed to transfer the authority vested in us by the Westercon 73 Business Meeting to Arlene Busby, and her committee is in charge of Westercon 75. In the cases of Westercons 68 and 75, the entity making the decision to award the convention in the case of a broken site selection was not the entity that was actually responsible for running that convention.
I think that any organization other than the defaulting convention itself making that decision needs to not have an incentive to declare a default. If we had a Council of WSFS (as I’ve discussed), it potentially would be the body for doing so. But in any event, such a decision-making entity needs to make decisions that do less harm to WSFS’s name (by which I mean all of the things WSFS does, like Worldcon and the Hugo Awards) than just letting a Worldcon committee sleepwalk into default.
Kevin Standlee: If there was a Council of WSFS, Ben Yalow and the other distinguished SMOFs who were courted by the Chengdu bid and brought to Chinese conventions as guests of honor during their bid campaign would be the most likely people to be elected to it.
Seems like that the minimal obligations of holding the business meeting are about all we might see. The Chengdu committee should have been censured by the Chicon 8 business meeting, but that resolution did not pass.
Sad with the continued Covid lockdowns in China they likelihood of finding corporate sponsors will be nearly impossible.
Tom Kunsman says Sad with the continued Covid lockdowns in China they likelihood of finding corporate sponsors will be nearly impossible.
The Chinese government can pay for the Con lock, stock and barrel without any problem. I am reasonably sure that conference center is owned by the government, so there’s not really anything else major for expenses as I expect that whatever hotel they settle on will also will be governmental in nature.
Yes, the Chinese government can pay for the con. It spent $3.9 billion to host an Olympics. Compared to that the cost of Worldcon is a rounding error.
But given Chengdu’s abysmal performance so far, there’s no reason to believe the government is putting money or anything else into this Worldcon. And the more time that passes without any signs of life, the less benefit hosting the convention brings to China. There won’t be any international prestige or press coverage if nobody travels there.
Chengdu is so inert nobody from the con is showing up here in this discussion to offer assurances.
And rcade you are absolutely right. The Chinese government locally could pay for the Con but has little incentive to do so given the Worldcon committee is almost completely, well, as you put it, inert that I doubt they’re interacting with the local authorities.
At this point, I am puzzled as to why the local fan group wanted this Worldcon given they’re showing no enthusiasm for it what-so-ever.
Mm- this is a very sad situation. As former Chair of ESFS (which is kind of WSFS/Worldcon’s “little brother” and which is responsible for the annual Eurocons), we came up against a similar situation some years ago (in that the usual 2 year period for any Statute change to take effect, caused a problem in any sudden, must-be-dealt-with-now, emergency). In then came the very pro-European and now late and sadly missed Welshman, Martin Hoare (after whom, BTW, Martin’s Bar at Dublin 2019 was named). He then suggested and drafted what became known as “the Martin Hoare Amendment” to our ESFS Statutes. That allowed any change to go through the normal voting rules, for the usual 2 year change but then if such change was urgently needed, it having passed for a 2 year application, it was then voted on again for immediate application, here and now, by then having to have a minimum of 75% of votes passed. (It is in our ESFS Statutes.) This allowed ESFS to deal with sudden items, but of course requires a much higher pass rate to apply. Perhaps Kevin S might suggest such as a possible amendment to WSFS’s Statutes (tho these would have to be applied and then passed at Chengdu 2023 and then ratified at 2024 Glasgow.. Unless the 2023 text itself allowed immediate ratification, as per ESFS, at Chengdu!!) Best wishes to all for 2023…
It seems to me that if Chengdu were to declare itself unable to function regarding holding events and awards, it would make sense to reset the Hugo awards and site selection to either be virtual or to be hybrid, with an in-person ceremony to be hosted at another location that has at most a Low level of COVID cases and which will occur in 2023 but far enough in the future that the nomination and voting, notification, acceptance, etc, schedule could still be given the usual period of time before the Awards.
The most flexibility for this will exist if Chengdu can in fact get online nomination open on time in January, with international membership purchase available also. In the meantime, aren’t membership transfer rules still in effect? Are there seriously no Chinese agents who can accept international payment, then purchase a membership and transfer it to the proper purchaser?
We mustered the 2020 virtual NASFiC program together in approximately 2 months. I seriously doubt “all is lost” regarding Worldcon if we don’t confirm it needs to be virtual until closer to March. The lack of communication is very worrisome, however.
Do we know if the local committee is ok?
If Chengdu were to fold but decline to make an official statement of folding, it might not matter that the rules don’t cover it. I suspect a group of fen would be happy to organize an unofficial “Hugo” vote and site selection vote, all electronic. Possibly even an awards ceremony at Winnipeg. Possibly site selection voting with anybody who can show a Chengdu or Winnipeg membership at Winnipeg (I don’t speak to their willingness to do that, of course.) Then, after the fact, Glasgow could pass a resolution making them official. Or not. Some would like it. Some would object. They might get recorded as rogue and unofficial for all time. People would still enjoy them, work would get recognized, and there would be an asterisk next to the results in all records of the future. Why care, unless two competing teams did different ones, which I doubt would happen. True, the 2025 convention’s status would be dubious — Glasgow can pass an amendment but 2025 can’t ratify it, possibly a retroactive ratification in 2026 to make it neat and tidy. But this is all rules-bartering that business meeting smofs love. The majority of fandom just wants to have good conventions and vote/see the awards, official or not.
But I suspect that Chengdu will come through with something. If they do, that’s what it is, and one would not compete with it. They might do a terrible job, and be late about it, but I doubt they won’t do the basic work to avoid the legacy of abandonment.
You bring to mind another point. Somebody out there is already thinking how heroic they would look if they organized the Chengdu Fringe. Don’t do it.
Frankly, I’m not even sure of that, since I don’t think anybody has heard from the chair or other Chinese members of the con com in months. They don’t reply to emails and what little communication there is was with Ben Yalow and other western members of the con com.
And considering the current covid surge, previous total lockdowns and protests against China’s zero covid policy, I am now worried about the local con staff.
Cora Buhlert says “And considering the current covid surge, previous total lockdowns and protests against China’s zero covid policy, I am now worried about the local con staff.”
You should be.
And a Chinese functionary today announced, “We are firmly opposed to attempts to manipulate the COVID measures for political purposes and will take countermeasures based on the principle of reciprocity.” I would not want to be a traveller entering that country in the foreseeable future.
Mike Glyer says You bring to mind another point. Somebody out there is already thinking how heroic they would look if they organized the Chengdu Fringe. Don’t do it.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Getting arrested for doing unauthorised activities in an authoritarian state is a decidedly bad idea. Remember your rights as a US citizen cease when you leave here..
Cat Eldridge: I’m not talking about people going to China to do this. They do it over the internet from the comfort of their own homes. Like the CoNZealand Fringe.
Cora, the covid wave is over. Also, China has reopened and eliminated quarantine for visitors.
Chengduworldcon’s Twitter tweets daily and replies to tweets directed at or even mentioning them. It recently provided a list of contact emails.
I had no difficulties with the membership and payment process. Banking regulations make it hard to accept non-Chinese credit cards but on Twitter I saw the Con explaining to a fan how to pay by transfer instead, such as via PayPal. (While I hope international credit cards can get added quickly, I have no issue with PayPal fees for a Worldcon costing less than half of recent ones.)
Brian Z: I had no difficulties with the membership and payment process.
When did you pay for your Chengdu Worldcon membership, and in what country are you located?
@Brian Z: Cora, the covid wave is over.
What planet do you live on? Barring new precautionary steps, some worst-case estimates suggest that Covid could kill as many people in China in the next four months as it has Americans during the entire three-year pandemic.
Anyone with a Chinese bank account, wherever they are, is able to transfer funds to Chengdu using WeChat. My understanding of this is that if someone were to help their friends/fellow fans, that would be normal, and it happens in China every day. If they took a commission or did it on a large scale I believe that might be considered an unlicensed money transfer business. In other words, if one can afford the international transfer fee, why not just do it that way.
PhilRM, the wave that dominated the media over the holidays, as you saw, peaked in early December. That is not to say covid is over, in China or anywhere else.
@Brian Z–We don’t all move on circles where it’s common to have friends with Chinese bank accounts. This might not be as easy for most fans as it apparently is for you.
And while it’s normal in China to do things this way, they bid for and won the responsibility of running a WorldCon. That means making it possible for foreign fans to have membership, even though many will not attend. Same applies to nominating and voting in the Hugos, and voting in site selection.
And they’ve done nothing that even looks like an attempt. The government and corporate sponsorships they were apparently counting on without bothering to tell the broader fannish community, seems to not be coming through.
They’re flailing.
No one wants them to fail, despite your dishonest suggestion earlier. We are seeing them actually failing, with no signs of coming about, as some critical deadlines approach.
And we are wondering what, if anything, can be done about it, and what happens if nothing can be done.
That article you dismiss so lightly is dated Dec. 29, not Dec. 2. And WHO and other national and international bodies are expressing serious doubts about the accuracy and completeness of the info the Chinese government is providing.
It was not my intent to take covid concerns lightly. There was expression of concern for people in Chengdu and I had read the wave there peaked sometime in December and there are reports of life getting back to normal. They’re going to see Avatar and so forth. I agree that there’s a real risk of a surge from Chinese New Year travel. Whether it materializes will be clear on the other side of that. (Fourth week in January.)
Of course not everyone has Chinese friends, though if one wanted to go to Chengdu I suspect finding such a friend could be easily crowdsourced.
I just double checked in case there has been flux in the paymentverse. It currently allows, for my US PayPal account, two options: to send funds to the recipient’s Alipay ID (mobile number or email address), or by deposit to “all major banks.”
@Brian Z: the wave that dominated the media over the holidays, as you saw, peaked in early December
That’s not remotely what that article (which as Lis has already pointed out, is from December 29th) says: epidemiologists are predicting a disastrous Chinese pandemic in the coming months. Of course, you know that: you’re simply lying, like you always do.
@Brian Z–You’re deliberately ignoring the fact that major health agencies and authorities are saying the Chinese are withholding information. We can’t trust what the Chinese government is saying.
Your blithe assurance that everything is just fine with people no one is hearing from directly. Yes, you uttered more assurances about contact info posted in tweets–but didn’t link to it or share any details.
And…the Chinese do have email. There’s no good reason for them not responding to emails sent to the official email addresses of various areas of the con–addresses they’ve posted on their websites.
Whatever the reason for it, this is a WorldCon in crisis.
Oh, and yeah, sure, I’m going to trust my credit card info to essentially a random stranger. Which is what crowdsourcinf “friends” with Chinese bank accounts would be. Right.
Brian Z: the paymentverse… currently allows, for my US PayPal account, two options: to send funds to the recipient’s Alipay ID (mobile number or email address), or by deposit to “all major banks.”
You say “I had no difficulties with the membership and payment process”. But you very deliberately avoided answering my question.
So did you buy a Chengdu membership? If so, when? and in what country is the bank account/credit card account that you used located?
Anna Gray:
When planning for a Hugo ceremony, how can anyone know what level of Covid there will be when it takes place months or years afterwards?
Brad Templeton:
They can organize a presidential election for US for all I care. It will still not be a Hugo.
Brian Z:
I don’t think you will ever be able to say such a thing for a country as large as China. There will always be regional variations. Covid wave might be over in several larger cities, but still in full effect in other places.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/03/china/china-covid-peak-2022-intl-hnk/index.html
@Brian Z
I have Chinese expat friends with bank accounts in China and would have gone the route of using them as a go-between to get a membership, if I didn’t have one via site selection voting (since confirmed). However, this doesn’t apply to everybody. And I expect a Worldcon to be able to accept payment systems like western credit cards or PayPal that are used by a majority of the membership. Though I do believe that western Worldcons should also make sure to have the ability to accept payment systems used in non-western countries, where PayPal and western credit card companies often don’t operate.
As for the covid wave supposedly having peaked, other commenters already pointed out that since China eased most covid restrictions, a massive covid wave with ten thousands, maybe millions of deaths is expected to hit the country, because there is little background immunity due to China’s extremely restrictive policies, the vaccination rate is low, the Chinese vaccine not very good and particularly the most vulnerable older people are not vaccinated. All this has the making of a perfect storm and while the worst will probably be over by August/September, China has a rough few months ahead.
Furthermore, the Chinese Chengdu organisers were happy enough to communicate with international fans a year ago. Alison Scott, I and other fans virtuallychatted with people from the Chengdu con com, mostly students, at DisCon III and I also talked to Chengdu representatives at the Helsinki and Dublin Worldcon. Therefore, the complete radio silence from Chnegdu except for whoever runs their Twitter account and Ben Yalow is concerning, because it was possible to communicate with the Chengdu team until a few months ago.
There’s been a very large vaccination campaign for the elderly the last month to coincide with the openings, so the number of unvaccinated elderly most likely isn’t as bad anymore. Before the campaign it was 40% of those above 80 with a booster shot, but since then there has been several millions vaccinated per day.
Hopefully that will help a lot.
Cora, everybody in the US can buy a membership with PayPal or wire transfer today. The problem is you pay the bankers thirty bucks to do it. That’s why Chengdu advises hold off while they work on credit cards – to try and bring the fees down for you.
They got back to me in five minutes.
I agree with what you said about payment systems.
@Brian Z–So, Brian, is it your theory that the people saying they’re getting no replies to emails sent to the official email addresses are lying? Or that they don’t know how to check their spam folders?
And you still haven’t told us what country you’re in, or what country your bank is in.
Lis Carey: Brian Z… you still haven’t told us what country you’re in, or what country your bank is in.
At this point, it’s clear that his repeated claims that the Chengdu membership purchase process works fine for non-Chinese fans are merely baseless conjecture, and that he hasn’t actually purchased a Chengdu membership via that process.
Brian Z:
Please tell me where on the Chengdu website I can find information on how this is done.