Are you just pleased to see me?
How an internet storm about ugly illustrations escalated to claims of obscenity, foreign influence and sedition.
Every now and then, a story about something strange in a textbook does the rounds on social media. Sometimes, social media storms break through to national news media. And occasionally, those stories break into the international news cycle.
You might remember this Saudi textbook has a picture of Yoda sitting alongside King Faisal at the UN. Or this Ukrainian textbook has Photoshopped sad Keanu on to an iconic photo of construction workers in 1932 New York.
Haha, how we all laughed.
On 30 May, with images from a Chinese elementary school Mathematics textbook clocking up 4 billion views on Weibo, The Guardian ran a story about the controversy.
China’s education ministry has ordered a state-owned publisher to rectify a school textbook that went viral owing to what social media users described as “tragically ugly” and inappropriate depictions of children.
The mathematics books published by the People’s Education Press contain illustrations of people with distorted faces and bulging pants. Boys are seen grabbing girls’ skirts and one child appears to have a leg tattoo.
It seemed like a story precision-engineered for the digital equivalent of “And finally…”.
And yet, the story barely broke through in the UK.
But the Queen’s Jubilee meant the only blue content the British media were interested in was the red-white-and-blue of Union Jack bunting. And then there was the vote of no confidence and the only Johnson the British media cared for was the one left limping on with the support of 59% of his own party.
China’s blushes were spared, but there’s more to this story than meets the raised eyebrow.
All fun and games until someone loses an eye
The publisher of the textbook in question is People’s Education Press, which was established in 1950 and is directly under the leadership of the Ministry of Education. More than 100 of its titles have won awards for excellence at the national and ministerial level.
This is an organisation with a reputation to preserve, and so with admirable speed the People’s Education Press issued a grovelling apology and promised to republish redesigned books for September.
Crisis communications deployed, perhaps that might have been the end of the issue. Except there were more than just worms in this particular overturned can.
Firstly, it Beijing Wu Yong Design Studio were credited for the design of the entire suite of Mathematics books. Some internet sleuths found out that the studio had no industrial or commercial registration record.
Secondly, on closer inspection, some of the images in the book seemed to be seditious. On one page there was a back-to-front Chinese flag, and several of the characters seemed to be wearing stars, or stripes, or dressed in a colour scheme influenced by America.
Thirdly, the scrutiny of one set of textbooks led to scrutiny of others. Another People’s Education Press book included a reference to a child buying poppy-seed bagels, despite poppy seeds being illegal in China. Meanwhile, “Changjiang Publishing House published a story about a group of rabbits jumping into a lake to commit suicide.”
In 2016 China started cracking down on international schools because of fears of foreign influence. And in August 2021, China announced a wide-ranging policy to de-commercialise the English language teaching sector. Alongside preventing profit-making companies from operating in the sector, this latest move also prevented the use of foreign tutors, foreign curricula or foreign textbooks.
While the anti-commercial element of the policy was eye-catching, China is taking aim against cultural influences that do not align with the strict line of the Chinese Community Party.
Comparisons have been made between the “corrupting influence” uncovered in the People’s Education Press textbooks and the 2021 prosecution of Sattar Sawut. Sawut headed up the Xinjiang Basic Education Curriculum Reform Group and was given a suspended death sentence for his role in “incorporat[ing] content involving ethnic separatism, violence, terrorism and religious extremism into minority-language textbooks, which were used for 13 years and caused grave consequences.” Another director received the same sentence and a handful of editors were given long jail sentences.
Xinjiang is the heart of China’s persecution of the Uyghur population and it’s worth taking a moment to understand the charges against the materials published by Sawut. In April 2021, AP News reported:
The court said textbooks approved by Sattar Sawut were used for 13 years, bringing “grave consequences.” It said the 2003 and 2009 editions of the textbooks contained 84 passages preaching ethnic separatism, violence, terrorism and religious extremism and that several people were inspired by the books to participate in a bloody anti-government riot in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009.
Kamaltürk Yalqun, the son of one of the detained textbook editors, said the passages highlighted by the government were about old historical tales and figures that had nothing to do with terrorism. The real aim of sentencing Sattar Sawut and the editors, he said, is cultural destruction and assimilation.
“Because these textbooks are rich in Uyghur culture, China targeted them,” Yalqun said. “They’re moving toward the direction of eliminating Uyghur language education and culture altogether.”
China’s ruler, Xi Jinping is engaged in a war against “historical nihilism”. The Chinese Communist Party’s version of history is the only acceptable version, anything else is sedition.
Offending sections of the textbooks included a “1940s chapter of Xinjiang history and the short-lived East Turkestan Republic government, or that depicted clashes between Uyghur fighters and Han-looking soldiers during the same period”. Presumably, this would have been viewed as a history of separatism, which would have been wiped from the official slate of the state party’s narrative.
Which is perhaps why, as the net widened, yet another publisher found themselves in the limelight. The Shaanxi People’s Education Press published a supplementary book that featured a photograph of a solider carrying a woman. The book claimed that the soldier was Lei Feng. Feng was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army and the subject of several propaganda campaigns. Citizens were urged to follow his model of selflessness, modesty and dedication to Chairman Mao.
Except the soldier in the textbook wasn’t Lei Feng. It was a Japanese soldier in a photo staged by Japan to downplay atrocities committed during World War II. Was this an honest mistake? Or was it further evidence of infiltration?
Days after the issue kicked off online, the Ministry of Education announced that it would review every textbook in schools to root out inappropriate and seditious content.
How could this happen?
A few plausible explanations for how we got here have been put forward:
Internal QA processes at the publishers typically involve three stages of editorial review, and there’s an external review conducted by the Ministry. Yet, images are often added at a late stage, so sometimes textbooks will be approved without sight of the cartoons, illustrations and photos.
Illustrations are often drawn by students or non-specialists, and it’s common for them to misunderstand the artwork briefs. And the calibre of illustrator is an issue because…
… fees for illustrators haven’t changed for 20 years.
But there’s something else, which I think is often overlooked - the role of organisational culture, identity and values.
In reporting, you will often see concerns that reviews should be conducted according to “scientific methodology”, with the understanding that the best methodological guidelines will result in the best books. For example:
Zheng Wei, executive director of the evaluation and research center of children's reading and books at Beijing Normal University, said self-regulation among publishers is the first step to ensure children can read high-quality books.
Publishers should conduct all-around vetting on the ideological, educational, scientific and aesthetic aspects of the books to draw a safety line for children, he told Dazhong Daily.
The focus on “ideological, educational, scientific and aesthetic aspects” implies that there is a tangible objective standard.
The truth is that reviews are often a mix of subjective and objective – two reviewers given the same brief and guidelines will arrive at different recommendations. The individual reviewer’s qualifications and experience are often the only criteria used for selection, with little regard to their personal disposition and their fit with the Ministry’s culture.
And, equally, little regard is given to whether the publisher and the Ministry share the same culture, mission or identity.
Let’s consider an example. A few years ago a UK publisher (unnamed here, but independent until relatively recently when it was acquired by a multinational) developed a set of Psychology textbooks to submit for endorsement to a major exam board. The UK market has a few very large publishers and it can be difficult to develop a unique selling point if you’re a plucky upstart David in a land of Goliaths. So, the publisher designed the textbooks with a zombie theme. The cover had a zombie. Every picture featured zombies. There were even zombie jokes. But there was also complete coverage of the Psychology syllabus.
The exam board was utterly baffled. They were a serious academic institution certifying the nation’s children. Why on earth would they endorse a zombie textbook? The book was duly rejected until the zombies were eliminated (a sort of editorial 28 Days Later), after which it passed through endorsement and hit the market.
The exam board’s endorsement guidelines had nothing against zombies, but the culture and identity of the exam board deemed them inappropriate. The plucky upstart had to tone down their textbook, even though it meant undermining the British irreverence at the heart of their cultural identity.
The culture, identity and values of an organisation dictate what’s appropriate for it to endorse or approve as much as its endorsement guidelines or quality criteria.
Remember Saudi’s Yoda textbook? After the international amusement abated, heads rolled. (Figuratively, I should specify.) The undersecretary and several officials were sacked. This was an embarrassing cultural aberration that demanded consequences and rapid rectification.
And Ukraine’s sad Keanu photo? Once us international onlookers had wiped the smirks off our faces, a political argument whipped up about the dubious quality of textbooks. Alongside the hidden half of Wild Stallions, there were examples of old-school misogyny and folk remedies posing as science that had all made it through the approval process. How could the country have faith in the quality and competence of its flagship education reforms if its textbooks were not serious or scholarly? However, the debate was soon overtaken by a wholly different political problem.
So what’s next for China’s wholesale textbook review? Expect outrage of what’s been in use in schools for years. Expect announced reform. Expect sackings. But unless the publishers and Ministry align their culture, mission and identity - and unless the Ministry takes accountability for its role in approving textbooks - don’t expect real change.