Very cool, if true

I delved through the comments again. There was a few different comments which described a sequence something like: The original bid committee were plausibly well-meaning. It was typical for any chinese con to have sponsorships from some companies offering some expertise and resources. In this case it seemed like some corporation or local government initiative decided to make a big "Chengdu world capital of science fiction" thing, with a purpose built new venue, newly invented awards, etc. And they elbowed aside fans on the organising committee to organise the con as part of their plans. Including changing the date, and massaging the hugo award nominations to match a publisher's preferences. And Chinese sf fans who had supported the worldcon felt betrayed because they had subscribed to the con, and then got neglected, and the runners made up some statistics to justify the nominations for westerners who were complaining, but didn't do even that much for the chinese fans.

I've no certainty that that is accurate, but it sounded like a plausible sequence of events, the kind of thing that could happen without being obviously malign in advance.