A book intended for Vietnamese
five-year-olds features the Chinese national flag instead of the Vietnamese
one, a mistake put down to publication fraud and censorship negligence, has sparked
outrage among locals.
Page 16 of the book, titled
“Improving preschoolers’ intelligence comprehensively” by Dan Tri Publisher,
features a picture in which the Chinese national flag is hung on the roof of a
school.
The picture is high quality, and
even a 5-year-old can recognize that “something is wrong with the flag.”
According to Bui Thi Huong, the
director of Dan Tri Publisher, the book is the translated, copyrighted version
of a Chinese original.
Huong asserted that under the
terms of the contract, her company and Huong Thuy Co., the distributor, had to
retain the original text and pictures.
“The original is designed for the
Chinese education system, so the Chinese flag must be hung. I don’t see
anything wrong with that,” Huong elaborated.
Regarding the preface line that
states, “The book is designed based on the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and
Training’s kindergarten education,” Huong claimed that this was not present in
the electronic file of the translated book, which her partner sent her.
“Perhaps the distributor later
added that sentence to boost sales,” she reiterated.
Huong admitted that the preface
and lack of annotation on the book’s origin does lead clients to assume that
the book is made in Vietnam.
“We’ll demand that our partner
fix the preface, but the book’s content is unlikely to be revised, as that
would be a breach of contract,” Huong stressed.
“I think such a book, which the
publisher and distributor clearly note is designed for Vietnamese kids in
accordance with Vietnamese education, is supposed to have content and pictures
suitable for Vietnamese kids. The Chinese flag certainly shouldn’t be there,”
said Pham Tat Dong, vice chair of Vietnam Education Promotion Association, to
which Dan Tri Publisher belongs to.
“We’re totally unaware of this
book, as Dan Tri didn’t consult us. The company must be held accountable for
it,” said Ngo Thi Hop, head of the Ministry of Education and Training’s
Kindergarten Education Office.
Nguyen Thi Kim Thanh, former head
of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training’s Kindergarten
Education Section, put the incident partly down to loose censorship.
Roughly 500 Tuoi Tre readers
voiced their concern over the incident, and many of them called for the confiscation,
revision and even abolition of the book.
“The matter here is more the fact
that those responsible have cheated readers over which national flag is hung,”
commented reader Xuan Dong.
“With the sentence, ‘Professors
from prestigious schools recommend this book’ on the cover and the preface, I’m
sure every reader will think that this book is designed in Vietnam, or at least
is adapted from a Western original to suit Vietnamese education and culture.
This is a blatant fraud,” Dong noted.
China is currently locked in
spats with Vietnam and the Philippines over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong
Sa (Spratly) archipelagos in the East Sea.
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