By Ersatz Culture: I was super-happy that Rcade wrote up the Smofcon “What can we learn from Chengdu?” panel, as this was something that I felt definitely needed doing, but it wasn’t a task that I relished taking on personally.
However, there are a few additional comments I’d like to add, which I wouldn’t have expected Rcade or anyone else to know about, but which I feel are pretty relevant. I’ll tackle things in the order they appeared his piece, even if that’s possibly not the best logical structure for a standalone article.
These sponsorships will not be accounted for in the convention’s financial report, Chengdu Worldcon co-chair Ben Yalow revealed during a panel discussion in December at Smofcon, a conference for convention planners. “None of that appears on our financial report because we didn’t get any money out of the deal. The convention never saw that money. What the convention saw was Hugo finalists who would show up and their plane ticket was taken care of and their hotel room was taken care of. It means that our financial report is completely accurate and totally misleading.”
It is perhaps worth noting that a number of contracts covering aspects of the Worldcon do appear on various Chinese internet sites. I don’t have an exhaustive collection of these, and I believe that other people may have more complete records. For example, a contract with item number SCIT-GN-2023080147 is for the post Hugo ceremony party, and had a winning bid of 488,500 yuan, or around $68k USD. Another contract covering communications and the con websites may be of interest to Filers, as it explicitly mentions File 770 as one of a number of sites to monitor and respond to. The value of that contract is listed as 765,000 yuan, or around $107k USD.
Whether these contracts show up on any future financial report remains to be seen. [Click for larger image.]
The Smofcon discussion has drawn attention since Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford revealed last week that Chengdu Hugo Awards administrator Dave McCarty manipulated the nominations and final vote…
This is a minor and pedantic point, but it’s a bit of a touchy subject for me. As far as I’m aware, I was the first person to raise the Smofcon Chengdu panels on social media on January 28th, which was also run on that day’s Scroll. This was over two weeks before the Barkley/Sanford report was published, which makes no mention whatsoever of Smofcon or indeed Smofs. Of course, that report has massively escalated coverage of all the issues around Chengdu, but the subject of Smofcon in conjunction with that report was raised by other people.
Chengdu sponsors “were not particularly intrusive,” Yalow said, but the con could not change a sponsored panel’s scheduled time or panelists without consulting that sponsor.
I haven’t had time to dig out references to back this up, but I believe there were a high number of changes to scheduling of the non-sponsored, more fannish or literary panels. This caused stress to the people who were on those panels, causing scheduling conflicts with their other activities, etc. That’s probably not attributable to the sponsors, but it does feel like the fan and literary panels were treated as second-class citizens.
I’m going to sidetrack here slightly, but can I remind people of an item I wrote up in the November 11th Pixel Scroll, regarding how the con’s commercial activities impacted the more fannish stuff? This was part of a long write-up of a long Chinese-language article from a mainstream magazine, presented here via machine translation with minor manual edits, and with my emphasis added:
Previous conventions would set up a memorial area, which is a place for middle-aged and elderly science fiction fans to reminisce and reminisce about the past. In 2017, the British science fiction writer Brian Aldiss [who had previously visited Chengdu, and has several works published in China] passed away. There was a small space at the World Science Fiction Convention that year, displaying his works, and photos from his life, as well as some of his treasure possessions, and a black and white TV playing back interviews with him. In 2023, Aldiss’ daughter Wendy had also come to Chengdu. She told our reporters that the Chengdu Worldcon was originally going to hold an exhibition for those photos, but it was not possible “because of a lack of space.” …
[Double Hugo finalist, CEO of the publisher 8 Light Minutes, and member of the Chengdu concom] Yang Feng originally planned to stage a commemorative exhibition at the convention, in honour of Mike Resnick, the former editor-in-chief of the American science fiction magazine “Galaxy’s Edge”. After Resnick’s death in 2020, his collection and books were put up for online auction, and 8 Light Minutes bought a large number of items. “Look, this is full of his things,” said Yang Feng, pointing to a glass cabinet. Initially, the organizers promised an exhibition area of 70 square meters. Worried about missing out, “thousands of yuan [was spent] on freight shipping” the collected items. However, the exhibition area ended up being occupied by several technology companies, and Yang Feng was only given a glass cabinet.
Whilst this was probably not directly related to any of the sponsors, I believe it does show how priorities can change for what is supposed to be a fan-run con when business interests are involved.
There was one part of Chengdu that disallowed sponsors. “One of our ‘do not break this rule ever under any circumstance’ was no sponsorship in respect to the Hugos,” Yalow said.
I guess if you don’t mention that someone won a Hugo when you use them in an advertorial for one of the sponsors, that was published on the con’s website, then it doesn’t count as “in respect to the Hugos”?
The moderator Coxen read the question aloud: “One of the objections to Raytheon as a sponsor for DC 3 was not just who they were but the perceived lack of transparency around it. How do you think we could reconcile that with the effective but relatively subtle sponsorship Chengdu had?”
To be clear: no-one on the panel ever mentioned Raytheon in the main discussion about sponsorships, although they did namecheck Google and Boeing. It was only when an audience member at the very end asked a question that the most controversial Worldcon sponsor ever was included in the discussion.
She [Tammi Coxen] responded jocularly. “Nobody knew who the sponsors were, at least from the West, so nobody asked you hard questions about them from the West!”
Yalow dodged the question. “That’s a political question that is in a sense above my pay grade,” he said.
I guess SMOFs don’t read File 770?
In the October 9th Pixel Scroll, I wrote an item with the title “Who’s sponsoring the Chengdu Worldcon?”, pointing out that the two named sponsors in the Chengdu section of the just-released WSFS Business Meeting agenda did not match what had been previously announced at the June 12th Brand Conference, which named China Telecom as the first sponsor.
The photos from that Brand Conference show Yalow, McCarty and Montgomery both in the audience and on stage. The China Telecom logo can be seen on a large video wall, in English, so all three of them would surely have seen it. [Click for larger images.]
Observation 1: Per the Diane Lacey emails, June 12th is one week after Dave McCarty said that he would be arriving in China i.e. it seems almost certain that in the same visit that included this brand conference, he was also working on interfering with the Hugo nominations.
Observation 2: Whilst I wouldn’t expect someone to pick up on this in the bustle of a flashy PR event, perhaps they would have been curious enough to have researched who exactly China Telecom were after the fact? That person would have quickly learned from Wikipedia that
“In January 2021, China Telecom was delisted from the NYSE in response to a US executive order.[27] The same year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked China Telecom’s operating license in the U.S. for national security reasons.[28] However, China Telecom (Americas) Corp plans to keep offering other services on United States soil.[29] In March 2022, the FCC designated China Telecom (Americas) Corp a national security threat.[30]“
As I am not a US citizen, what US agencies might think about China Telecom is fairly academic to me. Perhaps I’m being naive, but following the 2013 revelations from Edward Snowden, I’d be surprised if their relationship with China’s government is much different from US telcos and tech companies and the NSA/CIA/etc. However, given the history with the Raytheon sponsorship, maybe someone on the Chengdu concom might have wondered whether China Telecom might not be seen as a problematic sponsor? NB: As I understand it, China Telecom are one of the big three mobile phone networks in China, so I imagine for a Chinese Worldcon attendee, their sponsorship of the event would be no more controversial than, say, AT&T or T-Mobile sponsoring a Worldcon in the west.
The October 11th Pixel Scroll contained a further update about the sponsors. In it, I linked to a Chinese language WeChat/Weixin post from the con’s account, that listed all the actual sponsors, with brief descriptions of what business sector they operated in, thanks to help from a few different people online who researched them.
If after all that coverage “[n]obody knew who the sponsors were”, then I guess I was wasting my time doing the daily Chengdu write-ups.
One slightly curious thing is that Huawei is not listed as an official sponsor, but their branding did appear on at least one panel, at which (IIRC) one or two of their employees appeared. Additionally, per the Smofcon panel, they paid, or offered to pay, the expenses for at least one guest. Huawei might be considered another controversial sponsor, given the multiple entries in the relevant section of their Wikipedia page. However, despite them being namechecked at least twice, this did not provoke any reaction at Smofcon. (Disclosure: I’ve owned a couple of Huawei Android devices in the past, and both I thought were decent and offered good value-for-money for their price point. And again, they are a mainstream mass-market brand in China and many other countries, so their inclusion would not seem surprising to a Chinese attendee.)
I still intend to write-up the other Chengdu panel from Smofcon, which features three of the employees of Chengdu Business Daily from the Chengdu concom, plus Yalow, McCarty and Montgomery. There are elements of that video that I find much more upsetting than this “What did we learn from Chengdu?” panel. However, properly writing it up will involve a fair bit of re-reading of con reports and other research, in order to properly discuss some of that video’s content. I know that at least one Chinese member of the con has now purchased a Smofcon membership in order to watch that video, and perhaps they will also have comments to make on it.
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You are indeed the person whose comments about the Smofcon 40 panel led me to watch it and write the post. I’m sorry I didn’t mention that and credit your efforts. Instead I did the journalistic hand wave of justifying the thing I was reporting on by saying it “has drawn attention.”
Your reporting on Chengdu has been fantastic. If Ben Yalow and the rest of the concom won’t account for the sponsorships, we need more reports like yours.
Clickity
I just realized that I missed an acknowledgement: I’m pretty sure that I heard about that Brand Conference in June from an issue of Zimozi Natsuco’s newsletter for the Zhejiang University Science Fiction Society. You can find an index page of the regular issues of that newsletter here; I’m afraid I don’t recall which particular issue it might have been mentioned in.
If you’re able to read them – either natively, or via machine translation – those are very good round-ups of various SFnal happenings in both China and the wider world. Dare I suggest they might be Best Fanzine nomination worthy?
No, Ben Yalow, it was NOT above your pay grade. It was your pay grade.
And this is why I posted on another File 770 post, NO SPONDSORSHIP. How can anyone GUARANTEE that the sponsors won’t twist what the con is into a commercial for them, and override anything that might be problematical for them?
Oh, dear, it might mean the con can’t do all the SMOFs want. Tough… this is by the fans, for the fans, period. It is not a professional or commercial con.
Excellent work, thank you. Is there a bottom to this crevasse?
Perfect.
Just want to say,…if as co-chair, it was above your pay grade?
Then who were you working for, Ben Yalow?
If Ben Yalow and the rest of the concom won’t account for the sponsorships, we need more reports like [Ersatz Culture’s]
Agreed.
“Above my pay grade” means “talk to my commander.”
Who was your commander, Mr Yalow?
Sponsorship is a horrible idea.
If WorldCons become sponsored events, they will no longer be “by the fans, for the fans,” nor about the literature and art (I’m using “art” to include all media, from the items in the Art Show to the various movies and such). WorldCon will be about the sponsors, and cater to the sponsors’ interests. Like happened at Chengdu.
We already have a plethora of those kinds of conventions: the ComicCons come to mind. They’re great fun, fans love them, go to them by the tens of thousands… but nobody thinks those conventions are anything other than very expensive promotions for upcoming media releases.
So. The con was paying bilingual contractors to monitor, not just the con’s own media, but the US-based File 770, and to “blackgate overseas science fandom fans” (firewall them? who knows.)
The con was paying, out of its official budget, to monitor US websites.
@Madame Hardy
Assume that is referring to blackgate.com, another sff blog.
Forgot the checkbox.
So the sponsors “weren’t intrusive” yet they had full control of the time slots and panelists for those panels?
The contradiction there is mind-boggling. Is English Ben Yalow’s first or even second language?
And indeed, as @Eric V Olson pointed out — exactly who was the pay grade above his? The sponsors, I bet.
@Laura,
Thank you.
Yeah, this gem from Yalow also kills me:
Just because they don’t have their name engraved on the rocket doesn’t mean they are not sponsoring the Hugos. You weren’t holding that ceremony out on the lawn there.
Not sure if Raytheon has quite dethroned Writers of the Future in 1987 as the most controversial sponsor ever.
I am profoundly grateful to Ersatz Culture, and others doing it, for the huge quantity of translations from the Chinese and explanations of terms in context. Thank you, a lot.
In general I agree with Yalow that sponsorships are allowed and this was a highly unusual year and he felt he should defer to the Chinese co-organizers about how reporting of it should be handled. “Above my pay grade” means “I don’t speak Chinese or work in the industry in China, so I deferred to others on the committee on how to handle that.” That’s fair. And it was a good idea not to plaster the brand of some sponsor all over the Hugo award ceremony.
But the finalist invitations got paid by a sponsor? It still looks to me like the CBD crowd misled McCarty and played to his personality (maybe it wasn’t hard) to convince him to go along with voiding thousands of Chinese ballots, allowing the Western slate to rise to the top. Then when they realized that meant hardly any finalists in “big” categories would show up, they used their connections to get sponsorship to pay Western finalists’ expenses to come. If that’s the way it happened, that’s just corrupt.
@Bruce Baugh: Thanks, but rather than me accepting praise I’m dubious that I deserve, could I suggest/request that people please try to pay enough attention to the Chinese fans who have gone out of their way to try to bring this stuff to wider notice here, on social media, etc? (Obviously I’m not singling you as an individual out here, but rather the wider western fandom.)
For example, the screenshots near the top of this article showing the contract that mentions File 770 came about from comments made here by Zimozi Natsuco on the July 25th Pixel Scroll. That Scroll only garnered 23 comments, which I suspect is below average?
If the stuff that Chinese fans were reporting (long before I came on the scene) had been acted upon sooner – maybe not so much against the CBD types, but putting by pressure on Yalow/McCarty/WSFS/etc to act, or at least respond – then perhaps some of the later dramas and controversies could have been averted?
The most interesting point is that the CBD has no ability to influence and lead the discussion in overseas media like Twitter and File770. If they could Mr.Barkely would have already died! They can block the discussion in the Chinese media like WeChat, QQ and Weibo, and they did. However, they did not have an influence on foreign media. So the only thing they can do is to monitor and write down the news as a piece of evidence showing the inner enemies unite with foreign enemies to spoil the Worldcon. Clear evidence showed that CBD used their influence to persecute dissidents in the Chengdu committee.
Ridiculous.
I hate to steal a slogan referring to the Holocaust and I apologize to those this offends but NEVER AGAIN!!! NEVER AGAIN! Never again should Worldcon be used by industry and capitalism. Being sponsored by Wizards of the Coast or even Raytheon is not the same thing. (Actually a panel on Raytheon technology would have been interesting). If someone helps the con by sponsoring, I would not object to SF and fantasy, gaming etc. related companies or even the equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce or the Tourist Bureau for the local area. Visit Beautiful Scotland or whatever their slogan is, is not offensive.
I saw that SMOFCON panel online as I was an online member of the convention. What a bunch of mealy mouthed answers. Above my pay grade, yeah.
@Zimozi,
I completely believe you about who’s being controlled and how. The contract did say, however, that the contractors were expected to respond on these sites, not just observe.
Thank you for all your reporting, translation, and explanation.
@Brian,
It was NOT in the Chinese government’s interest for all the Chinese-language works to be thrown off the ballot. Far from it. This con was supposed to be promoting and celebrating Chinese science fiction.
The ballot process is still corrupt, but it’s Anglo corruption.
@madame hardy – but if the ballot has been full of only Chinese fiction, then there would be no foreign Hugo Finalists coming to Chengdu. No foreigners to be talk about how awesome the con was in the West and to bring international attention to it. If there were no Western works nominated, most people and the press in the West would have stopped paying attention months before the ceremony. I believe it was (Chinese-American Hugo Finalist) Richard Man who described this as a coming out party for Chinese SF. It’s not much of a party if no one except your (metaphorical) next door neighbor attends. And the ballot being what it was is what made a lot of that possible.
So much of this sordid funny business can be linked to actors with a monetary interest in seeing this or that Chinese language IP boosted or given short shrift that we must consider the potential impact of selling Chinese language rights to the “usual suspects”, Daughter and Babel.
Tammy Coxen: I thought the offer of a subsidized trip to China was a strong attraction by itself. Think how many accepted one with no award on the line in the years when Chengdu was laying the groundwork for its bid.
@Mike – Sure. And there were some non-Hugo finalists who got their way paid to attend. But they offered a fully paid trip to every single Hugo finalist, so I think they ended up with more higher profile attendees that way than they would have otherwise.
I think the reason Chengdu wanted to host the Worldcon is that they wanted to be seen as hosting an international event. If it was all Chinese, then it wouldn’t have had nearly as much cachet. This was the same argument I made to people who predicted that once the Worldcon went to China once, they would vote it there every year for the rest of time. It would quickly cease to have no value as a international, prestigious event if it happened in China every year.
I just think it’s not as obvious as people seem to think that it’s all about “Anglo corruption.”
Guide: Here are all the words Chinese state media has banned.
What is the “CBD” people keep referring to and not bothering to explain what they are referring to?
I trust it’s not the most popular use in English: “Cannabidiol.”
All hail Dave McCarty, who made the Hugo Awards great.
Srsly?
Tammy Coxen: The media reported several years ago that China had an initiative to host international events, of which the Olympics was just the most conspicuous example. So I agree with your thoughts about seeking to enhance the prestige of the event.
I also always thought it was nonsense to think China wanted to capture the Worldcon. But the only disproof for hysterical speculation is how events actually play out. So I have just waited. They did use the Worldcon and Hugo brand to help launch the Tianwen literary award– and that is controlled by people there.
Gary Farber:
ChinaChengdu Business Daily. But I see CBD and that happens to me too.Chengdu Business Daily
Wow, I don’t even know where to begin. That’s how the folks behind this mess justify it I suppose. But that doesn’t make it right or any less crappy.
I don’t understand the point you’re making. Are you suggesting a motive for the Hugo team committing fraud or approving of the end result of their actions being a bunch of Western nominees coming to Chengdu?
It was Richard Man – way back in October, he said this:
“Elsewhere discussions abound about Chengdu Worldcon. One look at the venue, the pictures that I have posted, and if you are in Chengdu, seeing the promotional banners, huge signs everywhere, it’s clear that THIS is the pride of Chengdu, Sichuan, and China. This is the time and place China wants to announce to the world that China is a major face of science fiction.”
And if you want that to happen, you’ve got to get the world to pay attention. (Sadly, now they’re getting all the wrong kind of attention…) But it would not surprise me at all if there were people involved in the convention in China who would not have been happy with an all-Chinese ballot.
“China understands that Chinese science fiction is really important, but also realizes that Chinese science fiction is unappealing”.
That’s what you just said.
Tammy Coxen:
Immaterial. Unless the Hugo administrator and the concom colluded to bollocks up the nominations and votes, the ballot would have reflected what got the votes. Because, you know, as a group, we’re not really about censoring things to please our masters.
Tangentially, Courtney Milan dug up two translations of Chinese works that appeared in Clarkesworld that might have been on the ballot if shenanigans perpetrated by the North Americans hadn’t been perpetrated. I haven’t read them both, but one – Hummingbird, Resting on Honeysuckles, by Yang Wanqing – is lovely and might well have appealed to lots of voters regardless.
Responding to Madame Hardy – It’s really not. It’s about “The West doesn’t pay much attention to Chinese science fiction, and we want to the West to pay attention to the fact that we held this important event.”
Reaction in the western press to Hugo ballot that’s all in Chinese: “Chinese works dominate ballot of Hugo Awards held in China.” Then crickets. Then, “Chinese writers you’ve probably never heard of win Hugos.” And not a lot of follow on press.
Reaction to Hugo ballot with some prestigious Western finalists: many articles in Western news sites, finalists posting about their travel to the convention, people writing about the Chinese writers who are sharing the ballot with Westerners, interviews with winners about their time at the convention and how amazing it all was…
If you don’t think showing off to the West was a big part of the point, then yep, my argument doesn’t make any sense. And had it been a fan-run, fan-driven endeavor, I’d likely agree with you. But it’s clear that’s not what this event was. This is all just my opinion, and unlike many other people, I don’t think Dave was acting in isolation from the Chinese members of the subcommittee.
@Cheryl S – all I’m suggesting is that they DID collude, because they had motivation to do so.
Okay, agree that Dave saw it that way and justifies what he did for that reason. Doesn’t mean he was actually correct in seeing it that way.
This is kind of like pointing out that some people like saucers under their cups, which is just as relevant to the discussion.
There is ample evidence that the North American members of the Chengdu concom violated every known standard for Worldcon and the Hugos and were generally bad actors on purpose. Okay, actually some of it appears to have been incompetence, but, still, mostly on purpose.
Everything else, including what self justifying lies the North American members of the concom told themselves and the role Chinese fans, Chinese business interests, and/or Chinese concom members played is nothing but pointless speculation.
I have to say, it bothers me that while we have multiple smoking guns with Dave McCarty’s fingerprints all over them people are still trying to spin hypotheticals of how the Chinese could be to blame for this.
Until there is evidence of Chinese malfeasance in this matter, shouldn’t we be dealing with the issue before us that we have incontrovertible evidence for? Whatever else was done, we know that this was a massive entitled and embarrassing screw-up by Western fandom’s own.
I would feel a lot better about the situation if more people were focused on trying to figure out how to make it right. Or at the very least, to ensure it does not happen again.
Peace Is My Middle Name: There are people working out how to make it right, at least with the tools available to the business meeting. They’re just not doing that work here in the storefront window at File 770. I don’t know whether they’ll succeed, I just know they’re trying.
@Mike Glyer:
Fair enough. And of course.
I suppose this is a major place for the fannish community to kvetch and vent (and you provide yeoman service for that, thank you).
I am sure there are people much more experienced and informed than we are (well, than I am) working on this headache, and kudos to them.
I do agree with what @Cheryl S said earlier today on a different topic:
The continuing silence, lack of sensible explanation — or even excuses — and the steady agonizing trickle of ever-more-damning evidence, does not suggest to me noble motives, nor even innocent naïfs coerced and manipulated. More and more it sounds like straightforward, inexcusable arrogance and folly.
Say the ballot had been Babel, Chinese works, and maybe one or two other Western works. Imagine the alternate universe where all these mainstream Western news items with R.F. Kuang’s picture at the top were talking about her Hugo win instead of her exclusion.
(Not saying that would have certainly been the result. This is just one alternate universe.)
@Mike Glyer:
I saw a link on Bluesky to one of the avenues available. It’s not a site that is friendly to my brain, so I didn’t join, but I wish them the best of luck.
What are the chances that fandom would now, after all this time, agree to WSFS becoming a 501c3?
What we can learn from Chengdu is to ask hard questions of the people from Western fandom who were involved in running the con. Especially when we have evidence of fraud at the Hugos and an intentional lack of transparency about the money flowing into the con.
Making vague insinuations about Chinese misbehavior, accompanied by no evidence at all, serves no purpose.
This is the time for tearing down, not building up.
rcade: What we can learn from Chengdu is to ask hard questions of the people from Western fandom who were involved in running the con.
The thing is, a lot of us did ask the hard questions. And we were lied to at every turn — especially by Ben Yalow and Dave McCarty — and then we were called racist for implying that everything would not be done with integrity and without censorship.
What JJ said.
And that’s part of why I’m so incandescently angry. There was just a hop and a skip from ‘it’ll all be fine and doubting us and the wisdom of taking Worldcon to China is just racism and xenophobia’ to cooking the numbers and, so far as anyone can tell, the books.
These oh so reassuring jackholes didn’t even pause before they violated pretty much every norm that had ever been normed, leaving WSFS, the Hugos, and fandom in the wreckage of their hubris, lack of integrity, and refusal to take any responsibility.
Yup. You certainly don’t want to build up from that foundation.
Peace Is My Middle Name: I am sure there are people much more experienced and informed than we are (well, than I am) working on this headache, and kudos to them.
If you would like to assist, your presence would no doubt be welcomed. Email me on jjfile770 at the Google mail domain for info.