All three authors have criticised the CCP in the past. The awards were held in Chengdu, land ot pandas , spicy food , and snowflake leadership. Two of the authors are from international Chinese diaspora . The snowflakes running the country are incredibly sensitive to what ethnic han Chinese outside China - especially in public spheres - say about them. They threw Gaiman in for good measure ( atleast theyre consistent which is kind of surprising). This is just another small measure of softpower being exerted. Any author with reliance on that market is either self censoring or prepared to not have access to it. So clearly its what Hugo did in order to leave in one piece. Mustve been some interesting conversations go on.