A state-owned Chinese educational publisher was forced to recall a set of elementary school math textbooks after its illustrations were widely criticised for being ugly, pornographic and covertly pro-American.
People’s Education Press issued a public statement on May 26 promising to redesign the illustrations after its textbooks became the most-discussed topic on China’s Twitter-like Weibo social media platform. It continued to be one of the top trending items on Weibo on May 27, as a hashtag on the subject had been viewed more than 2.2 billion times as of 11.38am Beijing time.