China punishes 27 people over ‘tragically ugly’ illustrations in maths textbook

One thing which fascinates me about China's government are the words they will use to describe things. Recently they had some sort of crackdown on videogames and the government used the words "spiritual opium" in terms of how they say it affects the youth.

I can't imagine my government using the word 'spiritual' like that and it left me wondering if this was a mistranslation or the CCP is actually concerned about citizens spiritual welfare?

I see 'tragically ugly' as another example. North Korea communicates this way too and I wonder if they're just finding the coolest synonyms in a thesaurus or this is how they actually communicate to their citizens.

"many also criticised them as bringing disrepute and “cultural annihilation”, speculating they were the deliberate work of western infiltrators"

"the president of the publishing house was given demerits, [and] the editor-in-chief and the head of the maths department editing office were also given demerits and dismissed"

"The investigation results were viewed and discussed by hundreds of millions, with some questioning whether the punishments went far enough"

Pretty savage response for some drawings.

more examples of the bad drawings: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/chinese-elementary-school-textb...