Uproar in China over textbook images ‘not suitable for children’

China’s education ministry has ordered a nationwide review of textbooks after illustrations in widely used mathematics textbooks for primary school students were criticized online as ugly, sexually suggestive and anti-China.

HONG KONG — China’s Education Ministry has ordered a nationwide review of all elementary school, high school and university textbooks after illustrations in widely used mathematics textbooks for elementary school students were criticized online as ugly, sexually suggestive and anti-China. 

The textbooks, published by the state-run People’s Education Press, have been in use for about a decade, according to Chinese news reports. But there has been an outcry on Chinese social media since last week, when illustrations from the books were posted on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

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Some Chinese internet users criticized what they said were racist depictions of people with small, wide-set eyes, while others objected to scenes that appear to show girls being groped or boys with bulging pants. An inaccurate rendering of the Chinese flag and a drawing of a boy wearing the U.S. flag colors of red, white and blue also drew accusations that the publisher was sending a pro-Western, anti-China message.

“This is not a problem of art, this is a problem of ideology. Do they really not know the seriousness of the problem of ideology infiltrating education?” a Weibo user commented.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/uproar-china-textbook-images-not-suitable-children-rcna31375

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