Emails leaked in February 2024 illuminated the global soft power strategies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -- besides infiltrating academia, cultivating politicians, and dissuading dissent in democratic institutions. The revelations suggest how, long range, the CCP could combine intellectual property-ganda with TikTok's X-ray vision into the social-emotional compulsions of millions of young users residing in rival countries such as the United States.

The documents confirmed that when science fiction's most recent Hugo Awards denied victories destined for certain top vote recipients -- among them R.F. Kuang's novel Babel and the sixth episode of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman -- it was indeed over fear that the authors' works, lives, or activism might anger the selection panel's hosts for Worldcon 81: the Chinese government. Similarly, when nomination ballot voting statistics released by Chengdu Worldcon Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty were analyzed, inaccuracies and inconsistencies were discovered. Thus, it may be presumed that fraud was afoot. It's still unknown to what extent the panelists pre-emptively self-censored and to what extent the authorities put thumbs on the scales.

During the convention, however, the Propaganda Department of the CCP's provincial committee in the area conducted strict checks on works suspected of being related to politics, ethnicity, and religion -- and proposed disposing of some "related to LGBT issues." Meanwhile, accounting specifics of the con's sponsorships from commercial or government entities have been kept opaque. But science fiction fandom news site File 770, who covered the whole affair in detail, tracked the initial wave of subsidized trips offered by the convention to overseas guests. Such subsidies included airfare, lodging, local translators, et cetera -- something no other Worldcon has ever been able to afford. Worldcon 81 co-chair, Ben Yalow, said the sponsors paid for "damn near everything."

As the convention concluded in Chengdu's Pidu district, state and business interests celebrated investing in an "Industrialized Science Fiction Program"; then in April 2024, the Pidu area government issued a ten-year-plan telling officials to "Extend the brand effect of Worldcon"; apply to host it again within five years; cultivate "young science fiction writers"; attract "science fiction celebrities"; "create or introduce" more than "100 science fiction-themed" intellectual properties within three years; "Create colorful fan communities"; "continue to operate" Worldcon's "online space" and more.

Just as Superman, in the World War II and Cold War eras, recruited impressionable audiences toward jingoism and fighting for "truth, justice, and the American way," so any future Chinese Communist Party intellectual properties that come of all this will surely glorify the CCP. A future of their approved science fiction stories narrowcasted over TikTok (or similar) via screens clutched by curious children worldwide ...

Created by Douglas Lucas in May 2024 as a footnote for his Aug. 27, 2024 article at Foreign Policy, "Banning TikTok Won't Keep Your Data Safe: Pompous billionaires, authoritarian regimes, and opaque oligarchs are hoarding our data. Only an alternative online ecosystem will stop them." (Gift link; alternate hyperlink.)