Let me show you why this is blatant propaganda and how easy it is to fool you about China if you don't speak at least basic Chinese. Based on a friend's post on FB.

This is what the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) according to the BBC said, but this is not true. This was a proposal by ONE member of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, it is not the MOE, the MOE merely gave a response.

The MOE's response is titled: "About the nr. 4404 proposal from the 3rd conference of the 13th national meeting." The response is entirely different to what the BBC "reported".

There is no mention of "boys" or "girls" in the response, it only talks about promoting health and sports. The only term that can be dragged out is 阳刚之气 which often gets translated as masculinity in English, but it is not that, it simply means "grit" in a gender neutral way.

The verbatim translation is "Yang (as in Yinyang) steel air", thus the reason it more or less means grit. The MOE said promote that grit among all students, indifferent of their gender. Also, this grit refers to courage and resolve, strength of character.

However conventionally it is seen as a character trait of boys and I emphasize "conventionally" because the CPC and the government has made huge strides in attempting to go beyond conventional stereotypes, which is a good thing and annoying to see the BBC try to spin it.

This is why this issue generated a lot of discussion on Chinese social media too like Weibo, Wechat, Qq etc. But the MOE made no mention of any gender of any students, that's a blatant distortion by BBC.

Also, the BBC conflates a random representative of the CPCC with entire Ministry of Education, nay, China as a whole. Quality journalism there, folks. Especially that the MOE made careful steps specifically not to use gendered terms. The proposal used male/female, the MOE did not

People's Daily, the CPC's official media organ, also published a response clarifying that 阳刚之气 cannot simply be understood as "masculinity" and that since it means strength of character, courage etc., all students need 阳刚之气:

This is a good example how legislation, public debate on social media, and conventional media operates in China around the clarification of a term like 阳刚之气 in terms like masculinity, femininity, gender stereotypes etc., leading to a complex understanding of the issue.

BBC distorts this into a falsehood that "China did x bad thing", not even the MOE, not the government, but China as an abstract whole. Now, stereotypes exist in China, like they do most other places, but it is clear from all this that it is reflected upon in a meaningful way.

This is just one example how you are being lied to about China and how insidiously propaganda works if you don't know the bare minimum of Chinese. This is why I say it's impossible to report/learn on/of China if you don't know at least the minimum of Chinese to begin with.

@threadreaderapp please unroll.