China has ordered a nationwide review of school textbooks after illustrations deemed ugly, sexually suggestive and secretly pro-American caused public uproar.
The news has alarmed some experts and parents who fear the campaign is turning into a political witch hunt and represents an unnecessary tightening of the country's already stringent censorship of cultural publications.
Some Chinese internet users have criticized the pictures of children with small, drooping, wide-set eyes and big foreheads as ugly, offensive and racist.
Internet users have also accused the illustrations of being "pro-United States," because they show several children wearing clothes patterned with stars and stripes and in the colors of the American flag.
Many expressed shock and anger that such "substandard" illustrations had not only made it into textbooks published by the state-owned People's Education Press, the country's biggest textbook publisher founded in 1950, but had gone unnoticed for so many years (the textbooks have been in use nationwide since 2013.) Others questioned how these textbooks had passed the country's notoriously strict publication review process.
On Saturday, China's Education Ministry stepped in, ordering the publisher to "rectify and reform" its publications and make sure the new version would be available for the fall semester. It also ordered a "thorough inspection" of textbooks nationwide to make sure teaching materials "adhere to correct political directions and values, promote outstanding Chinese culture and conform to the aesthetic tastes of the public."
Under Xi, the Chinese government has banned foreign teaching materials -- including textbooks and classic novels -- in all public primary and secondary schools, stating that all teaching materials "must reflect the will of the party and the country."