No Offense Is Petty Enough to Evade the Eye of Xi
Red China’s surveillance state meddles in literary awards.
The 2023 World Science Fiction Convention was held in Chengdu, China. Some controversy surrounded the site’s selection (which you may read about here, if you are so inclined). That tempest passed quickly. A few days ago, a new storm erupted that isn’t likely to abate so soon.
For those who don’t know (those who do may skip ahead), the World Science Fiction Society presents awards each year for distinguished work in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. They are called the “Hugo Awards”, named after pioneering SF editor Hugo Gernsback (who has had the good fortune to escape posthumous cancellation).1 Unlike most literary awards, the winners are chosen by popular vote, specifically, by the members of the World Science Fiction Society, who are coterminous with the members of each year’s World Science Fiction Convention.
Voting for the Hugos proceeds in two rounds: a nominating ballot and a final ballot. WSFS members may nominate up to five works or individuals in each of roughly 20 categories (e. g., Best Novel, Best Dramatic Presentation (divided into Long Form and Short Form), Best Artist, Best Fanzine). The six top finishers in each category on the nominating ballot appear on the final ballot. Both the nominating and the final ballots employ a ranked choice voting system.2
The balloting is overseen by a committee appointed by the World Science Fiction Convention. The Chengdu Worldcon’s committee had co-chairmen, one Chinese and one American.
The balloting for the 2023 Hugo Awards (for works published in 2022) duly took place, the final ballot was released on July 6th, and the winners were announced at the Worldcon. Then, very oddly, the complete summary of the results, showing inter alia how many nominations works (including those that didn’t make the final ballot) received in each category and how ballots were redistributed after each round of ranked choice voting, didn’t appear. The publication of those data is required by the WSFS Constitution and has always taken place very shortly after the awards ceremony. This time, it was postponed, without explanation, for weeks, then months. The full report showed up last Saturday.
Mere tardiness would have drawn modest grumbling but not much more. Fannish Standard Time is well known to be erratically connected to the mundane. What attracted far more attention was the fact that fully eleven works or individuals that received enough nominations to make the cut for the final ballot were disqualified. In four of those cases, works were ineligible under standard, well understood rules.3 In five, however, the only explanation was “Not eligible”, and in one, ineligibility was contrived through a “catch-22” application of the rules. File 770, a news site for SF fandom, has a rather full report, including the Hugo committee’s ipsi diximus explanation of the unadorned “Not eligible” rulings: “After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.” The committee has since then stood on its right to remain silent.
There’s no plausible explanation for this course of conduct except direct or indirect commands from the Communist regime that occupies mainland China. What the potential nominees have done to displease the Xi Dynasty is admittedly hard to descry with certainty, but one can hazard well-founded hypotheses. I’ll look at the most prominent of the disqualified works, R. F. Kuang’s historical fantasy Babel. At first glance, this novel seems hardly a likely candidate for Communist ire. Read the blurbs and reviews on Amazon, and you’ll see agreement that the book is a searing indictment of Nineteenth Century European imperialism in general and of the West’s mistreatment of China in particular.4
It certainly is that, but not necessarily only that. The full title of the work is Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. The theme, greatly simplified, is that violence is the only way to overthrow a tyrannical regime and that a successful revolution is worth the price even if it sacrifices future prosperity.
Is it not believable that some Communist cultural bureaucrat read that tale and concluded that its anti-imperialism was only a veneer? The British Empire and the Ch’ing Dynasty are long gone; the totalitarian Xi Dynasty is not. Moreover, as the economy of the Communist-controlled territory shows increasing signs of strain, a revolutionary upheaval is less inconceivable than it was just a few years ago.
Add that the author’s family emigrated from the Chinese mainland when she was a child, that she has been raised in the United States and that her grandfather served in the army of Chiang Kai-shek. Is that not further evidence that Babel is counterrevolutionary, as dangerous as commemorations of Tiananmen Square?
I have never met Rebecca Kuang. For all I know, her intentions in writing Babel bore no resemblance to what my hypothetical bureaucrat imagines. That does not matter. The book is objectively counterrevolutionary, and its receipt of an award at an event held on Communist-controlled soil is therefore intolerable.
The Xi Dynasty, thanks to its mastery of information technology, is perhaps the most thoroughly oppressive tyranny in the history of mankind. Soviet censorship depended on frail humans. The censors could be hoodwinked by “Aesopian language”, and the dictator might whimsically overlook transgressions.5 The Chinese today are not so fortunate.
I tremble for him. He probably believed that there are only two sexes.
For details, see Article III of the WSFS Constitution. Fans usually call the voting system the “Australian ballot”, and it is in fact used in Australian parliamentary elections, but the term “Australian ballot” originally denoted only a secret ballot, a concept that the Aussies were among the first to adopt in modern times and that is now dying out in the United States.
Best Related Book: One of authors was on the Hugo committee. Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): Two potential finalists were excluded, because other episodes from the same series received more nominations. Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form): The work had first been aired before 2022.
Just for the record, I want to note that the Chinese Empire was in many ways the architect of its own woes. It was itself an imperialist state, ruled by the foreign Ch’ing dynasty, which had no more concern for the welfare of the great mass of Chinese people than did the European “oppressors”. Nor, pace Miss Kuang, was China simply an innocent victim of the Opium Wars. The Ch’ing refusal to allow more than the most limited commerce with the West cut off imports of bulk goods like inexpensive textiles, which would have been a great boon to populace at large. Western merchants turned instead to merchandise that could turn a high profit on a small volume. Opium fit that niche.
Stalin, while generally banning Mikhail Bulgakov’s works, carved out an exception for The Days of the Turbins, a play marked by a sympathetic portrayal of White resistance to the Bolsheviks. He reportedly saw it fifteen times.