The latest news is the McCarty swapped a “slate” of votes for Chinese authors (that was actually a recommended reading list, published by a magazine), and just replaced those votes for votes for western authors.

This goes well beyond just ham-handed and incompetent attempts to preemptively appease Chinese censors, and into outright manipulation to deny Chinese fans their votes at all.

If we were still just in the world of “McCarty is attempting to preemptively censor to appease the government”, I’d agree with you. But we went past that point, and at this point McCarty’s hands are so dirty, it’s hard for me to assume he was just looking out for his local contacts.