Hugo awards Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors

[Deep State Witch]

1. I Was At the WorldCon Where Chengdu Was Announced

WorldCon was in DC in December 2021. I signed up, mostly because I wanted to experience a WorldCon and two of my favorite authors were guests. So, that meant that I got to vote on the location for the upcoming WorldCon in 2023. It was between Chengdu, China and somewhere in the US. (St. Louis, maybe?) All I know is that I voted for the not-China option, as did pretty much everyone attending. What happened was that the Chinese bought a whole bunch of supporting memberships, which gave them the right to vote as well. They stuffed the ballot box. Everyone was pretty stunned and pissed off that this happened. I warned every author that I talked to for the rest of the con to NOT take their working laptops with them and to take burner phones.