Enter China at your own risk.
The Chinese government is holding Cheng Lei, a Chinese-born Australian journalist, on charges of “illegally supplying state secrets overseas.” According to the BBC report, China is subjecting her to a “closed-door trial” and the specific nature of her offenses is unknown. The Australian ambassador has said, “This is deeply concerning, unsatisfactory and regrettable. We can have no confidence in the validity of the process which is conducted in secret.”
To be sure, China isn’t the only country that ignores basic principles of justice when it raises the “state secrets” excuse. The United States’ treatment of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange has been abominable. But in China, it’s much more the norm. If its government especially dislikes someone who comes to the Chengdu Worldcon in 2023, it may be a long time before they come back.
The cries that boycotting the Chengdu Worldcon is “racist” are getting thinner. Pretty much everyone who thinks about the matter realizes how dishonest it is to accuse supporters of the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and Hong Kong residents of racism.
An article by Sarah Mughal Rana on the Chengdu convention raises some good points.
Supporting and attending Worldcon 2023 makes us hypocrites. Writers create characters that oppose entrenched power structures, malicious regimes, status quos and utopias. In science fiction, we use our fiction to draw parallels about reality, unchecked uses of technologies, persecution and surveillancing. Our characters work to overthrow cruel empires; they are the heroes that protect their culture and societies against invasion, injustices and genocide. How can one of the world’s most prestigious writing awards celebrate science fiction’s best stories while millions of Uyghurs are subject to severe persecution? How can we celebrate China’s sci-fi scene when artists, writers and intellectuals of its ethnic minorities are interned in camps or in exile, unable to attend?
(Under the circumstances, I have to let it slide that the article attributes the rejection of the Jeddah Worldcon bid to “Islamophobia” while complaining about “double standards in the face of human rights atrocities” in the same paragraph.)
Rana’s article links to an interesting piece, dated 2017, about the efforts of a billion-dollar organization to build a “Chinese science fiction town” in Chengdu. The notion that last year’s tsunami of Chinese votes was a grass-roots phenomenon looks increasingly implausible.
Meanwhile, Sergey Lukianenko, an enthusiastic supporter of the Ukraine invasion, remains on the convention’s guest list. I don’t blame the con committee much for this; they have to keep the government happy. But that’s exactly the problem.