Chengdu 2023
The winning bid to host the 81st Worldcon in 2023 in Chengdu, Sichuan, China – see Chengdu Worldcon.
They described themselves: “We are a non-profit organization called Galaxy Science Fiction Alliance, which mainly consists of Sichuan Science Fiction Association and Chinese Sci-fi fans. Sichuan Science Fiction Association focuses on academic researches on Science fiction and fantasy literature, films, computer games and so on.”
The bid was launched in 2017, sometimes also calling itself PandaCon and using the slogan "Panda Wants a Worldcon!" (Chengdu being known as the panda capital of China). Bid co-chairs were Xia Tong (Tony Xia) and Wang Yating (Tina Wang). Wu Yin was liaison.
Their final competition in the 2023 Site Selection, after Memphis in 2023 withdrew in October 2021 citing Covid-19, was only Winnipeg in '23, which DisCon III allowed to file in April 2021 after bid filing had originally closed in February but soon after the Worldcon 2021 term was officially postponed to December. Chengdu won a landslide with 2006 votes to 807 (of which pre-con postal ratio was 1950 to 332).
It was reported {by whom?} that
The bid, along with Science Fiction World, the biggest SF mag in China, ran a telethon style live broadcast for the eight days before DisCon to get people to join the con as supporting members and vote on Chengdu. It ran from 19:00 to 22:00 each evening in China, that's 11:00 - 14:00 in the UK. They featured many Chinese SF celebrities on this and at one point tweeted that they had 106,000 people on stream.
- Bid filing (PDF, some content only as images; contains Constitution of the Chengdu Science Fiction Society, which is listed as official organiser/applicant).
- WorldconinChina.com – official website.
- Bid questionnaire (PDF on Web Archive of Smofcon 37 1/4, 2020).
- Articles tagged "Chengdu in 2023" at File770.
- “Chengdu gears up to bid for 2023 Worldcon”, China.org.cn, June 23, 2021.
| 2023 Site Selection | Website | 2023 |
| This is a page about a convention bid. Please extend it by adding information about who was bidding, officers, committee list, what they were bidding for, who their opponents were, and who won. |
