The Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon for Our Futures, committee has voted by unanimous decision not to accept passalong funds from the Chengdu 2023 Worldcon.
/s/ Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Chair, Glasgow 2024 , A Worldcon for Our Futures
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They, I mean Chengdu, have this?
I don’t really know if there are passalong funds. I suppose part of the answer would depend on whether Chengdu expended the money that went to its Wyoming non-profit corporation from 2021 site selection memberships.
I would be fascinated to know, from a functional behind-the-scenes POV, how much this decision is split between
1) Chengdu has offered funds and we are declining out of principle
2) Chengdu has theoretically offered funds but getting the money out of China would be more headache than it’s worth
3) Chengdu no longer exists in any functional sense and we can’t get ahold of anyone there regarding funds.
I suspect a large percentage is #3. Chengdu, as an official body, certainly doesn’t seem to be talking to anyone at this point.
Clickity
Ha. I scooped this on the Starship Fonzie podcast a week ago.
click.
Glasgow’s principled stand here may cover over the logistical problems of getting those funds, but I’d like to think it’s mainly principle. It wouldn’t be long for someone to discover if they take passalong funds, and hoo boy, the firestorm that would bring. Glasgow is being smart.
Eric Hildeman: I know we’re all eager to read that transcript. When will you post it?
I haven’t typically posted transcripts for Starship Fonzie. But I suppose I could do so. If you’d like the script I used, I can send that to you as a .docx.
Yeah, clearly it’s worth more money to Glasgow over the long run to turn this money down than to accept it up front. And they’re probably right. But it’s not an insignificant amount.
Dirty money?
Certainly tainted, by all accounts.
I guess it’s a bit too late to set it up, and there will doubtless be any number of complications that I haven’t thought about, but could these funds perhaps instead be used to set up some sort of TAFF/GUFF style fund, to enable a few Chinese fans to attend Glasgow or another future Worldcon?
After all, there was plenty of bad stuff that the Chengdu con did to Chinese fans (rescheduling; abruptly halting membership sales; the ceremony lottery; etc), and maybe this would be a way of compensating them for that, however slightly?
Eric Hildeman: My hearing is so bad, unfortunately, that I can’t listen to podcasts. I’d certainly like to listen to Octothorpe.
I have detailed proofs about the worst finical circumstances in the history of the Worldcon. However if I make it clear I am afraid that I will use the TAFF for the first time for my personal safety.
Ticking the box.
Here’s a link to Eric Hildeman’s podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/starship-fonzie-podcast/id1567133522
The discussion of the pass-along funds is in the Feb. 11, 2024 edition, Starship Fonzie #36, from about the 5:00 mark to the 8:00 mark.
… and I just realized that Eric linked to that podcast episode in his name above his comment here.
John S: Brilliant idea! We clearly need more Chinese–Western exchange on an individual fannish level… but, I am afraid, administering the voting etc. would be much harder than with standard Western fan funds. At least unless the mechanism were radically changed.
Joshua K. I could Google the link. Having the link doesn’t fix my hearing.
Explanation: I mean that considering the huge investment from the local government, I think Chengdu committee cannot have the money. They used a lot of investment and lots of money ran into ones’ pockets directly as a corruption. You know Ben Yalow said he could not see the money. He did not see it. Money, some part of it was used for the convention by the local government as a direct investment; others were handled to the Chinese members in the committee and they didn’t make full use of it.
Zimozi Natsuco: All of that makes sense about funds in, or transferred to China. And I don’t rule out that it may apply to funds held in the West.
I was only thinking that we hear it’s difficult to move money from the US to China. That doesn’t mean there remains a surplus in the account of the Wyoming non-profit. After all, there were ways to spend that money on behalf of the con without moving it to China. These subsidized invitational trips might be one, perhaps.
But we know from the DisCon III financial report how many dollars they got from site selection voter memberships. It was a lot.
@Mike: I posted the link for anyone here who is able to listen to podcasts and wanted to know where in the 34-minute episode the discussion of pass-along funds came up. (The episode description doesn’t mention that specifically.) It definitely wasn’t directed to you specifically, since I did see your comment that your hearing prevents you from listening to podcasts.
Hopefully among the other readers here there is someone who can and is willing to transcribe that part of the episode, or all of it.
Okay, I decided to transcribe the relevant part of Eric’s podcast, just the part about the pass-along funds.
Octothorpe is a great podcast. I’m sure we could persuade them to do a transcript.
I’ve posted the Starship Fonzie podcast to my blog. Here’s the URL:
https://milwaukeescifi.blogspot.com/2024/02/transcript-starship-fonzie-36.html
Thank you for that. I’ve got the entire transcript up on my blog as well.
https://milwaukeescifi.blogspot.com/
Thank you, Joshua K. Is that part all Eric talking?
And thank you, Eric.
Eric Hildeman: Congrats — a bona fide scoop!
@Laura: Yes, the part I posted was all Eric talking. (I don’t recall any audio clips or interviews of anyone else in the rest of the episode either, but at least the part I quoted was definitely just Eric.)
Thanks. Much appreciated.
Yes. I try to have guests on for an interview segment, but this particular episode was just me and the microphone.
Thanks, it does change the perception to know Glasgow did turn down a specific offer from Chengdu.
A quote from the podcast:
No one is taking money away from anybody. Glasgow is being offered money. Accepting money offered by an objectionable source is not evening the scales. It is making the recipient a party to something they find objectionable.
If you think I stole money and I offer you some, you’re not putting evil me in my place by accepting. You are joining me in evil.
An interesting point, except neither of us believes Chengdu’s money was stolen.
@rcade: More to the point (I think), if you are trying to establish a distinction between you and a group that has aspects you don’t want to be associated with, avoiding taking money from that group is a good idea.
“except neither of us believes Chengdu’s money was stolen”
Don’t know about you, but I think certainly any money taken from any fans whose Hugo ballots were thrown away was obtained at least in part by fraud…
I guess it depends on the nature of the evil, since stealing is evil, and simply being evil is evil. My only point is that money is money, and has no political affiliation.
And thanks to Joshua K. for posting the relevant quotes.
That’s fair.
How does $40,000 compare to previous years’ pass along funds? Is it significantly more or less?
@bopu
Not the largest but significant. It would certainly be a large help to a Worldcon less than a year out, doubly so because you have time to plan on how to spend it, unlike a high at-door take, which you can only really spend on something like pizza in the consuite.
I don’t know. There must be a record of it, somewhere.
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I think this is a wise decision on the part of Glasgow.
They have so much else to do with just getting the con to happen and ensuring the Hugos aren’t fixed this time, they don’t need the massive PR backlash that would come from taking what’s clearly dirty (indeed, evil) money.
Penny foolish, but pound wise, as it were.
The annual financial reports from each Worldcon to the business meeting should help track the pass along funds.
I find it interesting that there were any funds to pass along. If I’m remembering correctly (and this is entirely from memory, so whatever that’s worth) Chengdu did not have an add-on attending membership fee above the site selection fee. (Or was that only for international fans?) And I seem to have a vague recollection that they declined receiving any pass-along funds (given that they were planning on sponsorships, in addition to the hassle of transferring money). So if there’s $40,000 sitting there available as pass-along, it sounds like they didn’t spend much, if any, of the site selection fees. Though presumably they received post-site-selection membership fees from domestic attendees.
Though, of course, I could have scrambled up the facts in my memory.
Chengdu also passed along (or back, in this case) $57,000 to Chicon.
I generally cannot successfully include a link, but here’s me trying: Chengdu Worldcon 2023 Redirects Passalong Funds to Support Chicon 8
ETA: Nope. Anyway, it’s a File770 post from August 15, 2022.
Cheryl S: I fixed the link so it works.
@Heather Rose Jones
They did include attending (and virtual) for everyone who voted in site selection.
Vespasian was wrong.
Probably a wise decision from Glasgow. But it would also be nice if that $40K went toward some sort of reparative action: a high-paying anthology of should-have-been nominees, memberships in future Worldcons for all the folks who thought they were voting for Chengdu’s Hugos, maybe outside auditors. Stuff like that.