Before I get into this–Chinese science fiction is so much more than the chauvinist, authoritarian “Three-Body Problem” series. A great place to start is the short story collection Invisible Planets, and its eponymous story which you can read for free here. I’m also enjoying the Sinopticon collection right now. If you’d like to support the …
The Disgraceful 2023 Hugo AwardsPost + Comments (111)
In an emailed dated June 7, 2023 at 6:18 PM and sent to the Western Hugo administrators, Dave McCarty said “Tomorrow I have a 4 hour meeting with my chinese counterpart to look at ballot detail and determine if any ballots are to be voided (which happens with frequency so that it’s not *really* that controversial if we determine we need to do it) as well as what things we need to move categories.” The identity of this Chinese counterpart remains unknown at this time.
McCarty then added “The chairs and the administrators will review the items we’ve highlighted in research Friday evening if we have enough time after the ballot review…otherwise we’ll be looking at it on Saturday (China time, of course, so we’re about 13 hours ahead of you).”
This statement, along with McCarty’s earlier email saying the administrators will “determine if it is safe” to put finalists on the ballot or “if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it,” shows that the research the Western administrators did on Hugo Award finalists was used by the Chengdu convention chairs and administrators to determine who would be on the final ballot.
Lacey confirmed in an interview that this is what happened. “We were supposed to identify any issues and pass them on,” she said. “The decisions were above our heads.”
As Lacey explained in more detail in her apology letter, “We were told to vet nominees for work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other topics that may be an issue in China and, to my shame, I did so. Understand that I signed up fully aware that there were going to be issues. I am not that naïve regarding the Chinese political system, but I wanted the Hugos to happen, and not have them completely crash and burn.”
Were the unnamed interlocutors representatives of the Chinese government, or just citizens concerned about getting in trouble with the Chinese government? Does it matter? This is how state censorship works. The CCP can’t control everybody’s thoughts, but they can take enough high-profile enforcement actions that people end up controlling their own thoughts. Such control doesn’t only weigh on citizens; whether the Hugo administrators were worried for the safety of their Chinese counterparts, or willing to do whatever it took to hold the event in China, or any other hypothesis, the fact remains that they chose to do this. It’s a complete disgrace. I feel so sorry for the winners.
I also feel very sorry for the Chinese organizers, who were almost certainly stuck between a rock and a hard place, and are hopefully not in any danger. The government is clearly embarrassed; Chinese commentary on this farce has been disappearing from the Internet, and the organizers are unwilling to speak up:
An explanation for what might be happening came from Pablo Vazquez, a traveling genre fan and former chair of the 12th North American Science Fiction Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Vazquez is also well known for his connections with genre fans around the world.
When Vazquez was asked if he could help connect the authors with any fans in China who might comment for this report, he said “I’m sorry. They do not want to speak to the media even anonymously.”
As Vasquez stated in a follow-up comment, “I have a lot of love for Chinese fandom and my friendships and connections there run deep. That’s a real and vibrant fandom there that is, like us, wanting very little to do with their government being involved in their fandom. They definitely don’t think it’s their government and instead think it’s corporate interests or, even worse, a fan/pro organization. Honestly, they seem more scared by that than anything else which saddens me to see and despite multiple attempts to get them to share their story they seem really hesitant.”
He elaborated further: “They don’t seem to fear official reprisal (the CPC seems to want to find who’s responsible for embarrassing them on the world stage actually) but rather ostracization from their community or its outright destruction. If I were to hazard a guess, the way we blew up this affair in the international media has now put this fandom in very serious trouble. Previously, it was one of the few major avenues of free speech left in China. Now, after all this, the continuation of that freedom seems highly unlikely.“
And there you have it. The game was rigged from the start–heads the CCP wins a PR coup, tails free speech in China loses.
I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do about all this. Holding Worldcon only in ‘free’ countries will restrict the ability of people in repressive regimes to participate. But holding it in repressive countries will endanger the citizens, and the attendees, too. Inclusiveness is very important, but so is the message you’re sending to the world.