China: ‘Punishment’ of 27 Officials for ‘Tragically Ugly’ Pictures in Maths Textbook

A months-long investigation by a Chinese Ministry of Education task force found the books were not “beautiful” and some illustrations were “quite ugly” and “did not properly reflect the sunny image of China’s children”.

In a lengthy statement released Monday, education authorities said the 27 employees “neglected their duties and responsibilities and were punished,” including the publishing house’s president, editor-in-chief and the math department’s editorial director.

The statement said that “illustrators and designers were treated accordingly,” without specifying the type of “punishment.”

At the end of May, China ordered one nationwide revision of textbooks after some illustrations were judged, by millions of internet users, as “ugly, sexually suggestive and secretly pro-American”.

The news then caused some experts and parents to worry about a possible political “witch hunt” that would represent an unnecessary re-tightening of publishing censorship.

The drawings, found in a series math books used by the Chinese primary schools for nearly a decade, they were deemed controversial for various reasons.

Some Chinese netizens criticized the drawings, which depict children with small, aged eyes and large foreheads, as “ugly, offensive and racist”.

Others were outraged at the “sexual innuendo” in the designs, with some images showing little boys with an outline of their genitalia visible. In another sketch, a boy was shown with his hands on a girl’s chest, while another pulled up a girl’s skirt, or a girl’s underwear was seen jumping rope.

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Netizens also accused the images of being “pro-United States” because they show many children wearing clothes with patterns in stars, stripes and the colors of the American flag. Also, a design showing an inaccurate rendering of the stars on the Chinese flag was accused of being “anti-Chinese”.

Many expressed surprise and outrage that the images were not only found in textbooks published by the state-run People’s Education Press, the country’s largest textbook publisher founded in 1950, but had gone unnoticed for so many years. These textbooks used since 2013.

Chinese nationalist influencers spoke of “Western cultural infiltration”, claiming – without evidence – that the illustrators were secretly working for “foreign powers”, especially the US, in order to “corrupt the souls of innocent children”.