September 27, 2023
BEIJING – Netizens expressed anger after a publishing house mistakenly listed Taiwan as a separate country in a junior high school textbook.
The Encyclopedia of China Publishing House released a statement on a social media platform, expressing their apologies after students from Qingdao, Shandong province, raised the issue of Taiwan being designated as a separate country in a map included in an exercise they were working on.
To do the exercise, the students had to fill in the names of China’s 14 neighboring countries according to letters on the map. Taiwan was mistakenly assigned a letter, as if it were a separate country.
The publishing house apologized and attributed the error to negligence during the typesetting process. It said it had launched a book recall and pledged to hold those responsible for the mistake accountable.
The incident sparked widespread debate online, with many netizens calling for greater scrutiny and accountability from education authorities. They emphasized the need for a thorough investigation into the matter to ensure that such an incident never occurs again.