u/no_white_worship

There have been a few posts recently about non-East/South East Asia. This sub largely focuses on those of East Asian descent. It includes South East Asia because many of those people have strong Sinosphere influences and diaspora.

The label "Asian" is a poor label, as many of you know (alternatives are also not great). It has also been used to link South Asians (meaning a general label of "South Asia", itself not exact as there are ethnic groups within South Asia) with East or SE Asians. This sub does not support that. It is also being applied to mixed-race Asians as full "Asians". This sub does not support that either.

So the problem is trying to use a poor label (and admittedly one that evolved through a western lens) to create boundaries for this sub. Without boundaries, you end up with the mess of other Asian spaces where nearly anyone can join. That has been the root of many problems for ESEA people i.e. lack of gatekeeping, which is a core theme of this sub.

The term Asian is poor because it also fails to distinguish ethnic groups that are somewhat similar to Sinosphere people in countries like Nepal, Bhutan and North East India. (I also know this as someone who meets Nepalese and Bhutanese people.) However, this sub does not cater to those places or similarly Central Asia because of the widening cultural and phenotypic population groups.

That's not to say that some of these ethnic groups don't face western-style racism and brainwashing that ESEA people do, but other subs cater specifically to those groups, or other subs have an all-encompassing Asian definition.

u/Primary_Breakfast674 take note. You have posted to various Asian subs trying to promote your plight with ESEA people. We reject racism towards us (from whites, blacks, Indians, Middle Easterners... even ourselves) but your campaign against Indians falls outside the boundaries of this sub. Further posts referencing North East India will be removed.

All of this leads to the idea of pan-Asianism. This sub does not actively promote pan-Asianism but does not reject it either. This sub is about anti-western hegemony and anti-racism towards ESEA people (and sadly, sometimes, from ESEA people - a cancer). If you want to promote pan-Asianism, then fine. But the current reality is that ESEA people don't often get along, and that's outside of western influence. This is not an Asian issue - just ask the French and English how they get along, or the Canadians and the Americans right now. At EAP, if ESEA people hated each other, but hated white/western supremacy even more, that would be a step forward. The other problem with pan-Asianism is that it's a very American idea, and this sub rejects the Asian American political view of grouping everyone from continental Asia and the Pacific Islands. This is not an Asian American sub, so don't expect that form of American politics here.

In a sense this sub is pretty simple. We have no pseudo-activist grandiosity. We have no putting Asian men or Asian women first. This is a space for monoracial ESEA people to fight racism and western dominance. It encourages strong community. It is a sub for and by ESEA people and the only one of its kind on Reddit.

If the above doesn't match your views, other "Asian" subs might cater better.

Article in full in case of paywall

Yap Yok Foo is a retired chartered accountant living in Kuala Lumpur.

Published: 5:30am, 3 Oct 2026

Every morning, I settle into my armchair in Kuala Lumpur, pen in hand, to tackle The Times cryptic crossword, freshly downloaded from the internet. It is a ritual I have observed since my university days in the United Kingdom. I have become rather adept at it; in fact, puzzle devotees might recognise Sayang, the pseudonym under which I set crosswords for the Financial Times.

I can still recite the names of England’s 1966 World Cup squad in my sleep. My youth was scored to the sounds of Cliff Richard, The Beatles, The Hollies and The Rolling Stones.

By almost any measure, I am an unrepentant Anglophile. Yet, at 80, I find myself watching my grandchildren and being overtaken by a profound swell of emotion. Suddenly, and with startling clarity, I feel incredibly proud to be Chinese.

The road to this realisation has been long, winding and strewn with the cultural detritus of empire.

My story begins in 1946, in Kluang, a small town in Johor in what was then Malaya. My father, an orphan from a village in Nanan, Fujian, had fled economic hardship in search of a new life across the South China Sea. When I was born, Malaya was still scarred by the Japanese occupation and the British colonial administration had only recently resumed its suzerainty.

While my father dutifully sent most of my siblings to Chinese vernacular schools, fate or perhaps sheer happenstance steered me, the sixth child, to a kindergarten run by Roman Catholic nuns, where English was the sole medium of instruction.

Thirteen years in government English schools followed before I found myself in Mother England, reading economics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Along the way, I became a voracious reader, volunteering as a school librarian just to be closer to the world of Enid Blyton, P.G. Wodehouse, Thomas Hardy and Shakespeare.

I could trace the Battle of Hastings and the lineage of British monarchs with ease. Of Chinese literature, I knew almost nothing – save for Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West, and even then only in outline. Of Chinese sportsmen and women, I knew even less.

I eventually married a wonderful woman, also wholly educated in English. While our own parents had spoken to us in Chinese dialects, our three children grew up speaking only the language of Shakespeare. They became “bananas” – yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Two went to Oxford; the third to the University of Western Australia. I had succeeded in raising global citizens, but the thread connecting us to our ancestral homeland had worn perilously thin.

Then came the reckoning that only age and a changing world could bring. In recent years, the history books I once revered began to read very differently. The opium wars ceased to be mere footnotes; they became vivid, visceral acts of humiliation inflicted upon a people I realised, with a jolt, I belonged to. When I read the Western media, I began to notice a persistent, and often unfair, hostility towards China’s rise. Where I once nodded in passive agreement, I now felt a growing urge to defend China.

The true turning point, however, was physical. I made trips to China, including two emotional pilgrimages back to my father’s birthplace in Fujian. Standing on the very soil he had left as a penniless teenager and witnessing the breathtaking transformation of the country, a profound pride swelled within me – a pride of kinship.

At a beer festival in Qingdao, Shandong, where the Germans built a brewery in 1903, I learned that China had contributed to the first world war effort and requested the return of Shandong from a defeated Germany. I was stunned to discover that Western powers ignored China’s contribution and instead awarded administration of Shandong to Japan. Such a profound indignity inflicted on the ancestral homeland has never left me.

It was around this time that I began, belatedly, to acquaint myself with Chinese athletes. I now know the names Quan Hongchan and Pan Zhanle, alongside Yao Ming and Li Na. It is a small education, but telling: proof that the gap in my knowledge was never about absence of achievement, only absence of attention.

For years, I had felt a quiet inadequacy among my peers in Malaysia and Singapore. We shared the same colonial education, but many of us carried a silent grief for the rich heritage we had left behind. At my age, I assumed it was simply too late to change.

But history has a beautiful way of righting itself. My second son married a remarkable woman who had received a traditional Chinese education before studying in Australia. She understands the importance of passing on our cultural heritage. Her two children are enrolled at Kuen Cheng, a reputable Chinese school in Kuala Lumpur.

My greatest joy now is sitting with my grandchildren, trading the complex cryptic clues of a Financial Times crossword for the tonal rhythms of Mandarin. I am learning from them, just as they are learning from me.

I will still cheer for Malaysian athletes on international courts, and my Spotify library still holds 7,000 Western pop songs against a mere 10 Chinese tracks (mostly Teresa Teng and Frances Yip). But as I watch my grandchildren speak the language of my father, I know the circle is complete.

I am an Anglophile by education, a Malaysian by loyalty, but in my heart and soul, I will forever be Chinese. China is the land of my father and today, I silently and proudly cheer it on.

This Singaporean made the wrong decision. Yes, he broke a local rule, but you never not take offense at the slant-eyed gesture. The Swiss had the right to be annoyed, but he had no right to racialize it. The Singaporean apologized for his error, but the Swiss took it to the next level - and that's when you stop being apologetic.

It is a mistake that native and diasporic ESEA people do - accept offence. You are not walking the high ground. It makes you, and by association, other ESEAs look weak, which allows racism towards us. It makes ESEA women targets of non-ESEA men, because our graciousness is interpreted as an invitation for domination. This has been the history of ESEA people for a very, very long time.

Take the reverse - Singapore is a country of strict rules, but you will never see a Chinese man make racist gestures towards a white man who makes a faux pas. And if he did, you can be sure that the white man would start a fight over it.

>A Melbourne man finally spluttered out that he was guilty in court on Monday admitting to the murder of his estranged wife.

>At the Victorian Supreme Court Allen Keys, 68, was asked how he pleaded to the killing of Eva Lasrini, a mother of two.

>Ms Lasrini, 53, who lived in Dandenong, had been planning a trip to Bali to visit her two daughters when she was reported missing after failing to board her flight.

>Keys was arrested at Melbourne Airport after he tried to flee to Indonesia after the killing.

>His feeds also included comments belittling Western women and praising relationships with Asian women.

>In one post, he wrote: “its funny western girls see an old perv, Asian girls see opportunity”.

>On April 1, the day Ms Lasrini failed to board her flight, Mr Keys posted images and videos online with a woman believed to be his new Bali-based girlfriend, captioning them: “New girl new life”.

>His posts also contained anti-immigration and anti-Palestinian content.

No white men belong in Asia.

Some might say they changed Ramirez to a black woman for diversity, but all I see is a white man with 2 minority women. Why beautify the Asian woman? Why replace a minority with another minority?

DEI does nothing for Asian communities. It is a way to uphold white male supremacy while throwing crumbs to minorities. Let's see swapping of white men for Asian men to test whether DEI is truly progressive.

While not another WMAF murder, it is another case of ESEA women with non-ESEA partners being abused at noticeably high rates. What they share is the expectation that ESEA women are submissive. They are, of course, not, and all of us who grew up with ESEA women know that's the case. But non-ESEA men believe the stereotype. Some demand it, and when that fails, these men are also more likely to be prone to violence.

It's important to highlight this issue of non-white but non-ESEA men. They are not better than white men. Because this man is Afghan, some idiots will try to label him as "Asian", but no Malaysian or Chinese person would consider this man to be anything like us.

Full story in case of paywall

Carol Yang in Beijing

Published: 7:00pm, 11 Sep 2026

Singaporean and Chinese students led the world in educational performance in 2025, according to an assessment by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, as average scores across OECD countries reached a record low.

The 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment comprised 760,000 15-year-old students across 91 countries and economies, including OECD members and partners.

This edition of the survey was the largest since the OECD first administered the triennial assessment in 2000.

In the report that OECD released on Tuesday, Singapore outpaced mainland China in reading with 535 points against China’s 527.

The city state also posted strong results in mathematics and science with 563 and 560 points, respectively – second only to China.

Students from mainland China led globally in maths with 612 points and science with 597 points, vastly outperforming the OECD averages of 463 and 482 points, respectively.

The surveyed students from mainland China hailed from the country’s four eastern education powerhouses: the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Mainland China is not an OECD member and did not take part in the OECD’s previous assessment because of coronavirus pandemic-related disruptions.

The 2025 edition expanded beyond reading, maths and science to debut a computational problem-solving module. It tested students’ ability to use programming tools, run experiments and design digital products.

Macau, a special administrative region of China, topped the new digital module with a score of 572. Singapore came second at 563, edging out mainland China’s 560 and well above the OECD average of 500.

Traditionally, Singapore and mainland China place a premium on strong school discipline, academic achievement and perseverance. Both are relatively strict in controlling digital distractions in the classroom compared with many Western systems.

Other top-performing education systems included Macau, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Estonia, Hong Kong and Britain.

In contrast, American students posted mixed results. They scored 490 in reading – down 14 points from 2022 – and 463 in maths, similar to the 465 tallied three years ago. US science scores rose modestly to 502, with computational skills at 513.

At a global level, the results looked bleak. Compared with 2022, average OECD scores slid across the three mainstay subjects to varying degrees.

“The overall performance of OECD countries declined, with the lowest average levels of performance ever observed,” the report said.

Across the OECD, one in five 15-year-old students is now a low performer in science, maths and reading, up from 16 per cent in 2022, according to the report.

Long-term data showed reading had declined since peaking around 2012, while maths fell sharply after 2018. Science performance has dipped more gradually over the past decade.

The report also highlighted a drop in skills critical for the artificial intelligence (AI) era, such as evaluating information, synthesising multiple sources and thinking critically.

And the proportion of “hasty readers” – students who rush through texts and give quick but incorrect answers – nearly doubled between 2018 and 2025.

Digital distraction in classrooms was identified as a major driver of the slump, with more than a quarter of OECD students reporting that peers were distracted by electronic devices during science lessons.

Meanwhile, the link between AI usage and academic performance was nuanced.

The 2025 data revealed that students who used AI for specific tasks such as drafting, summarising or research performed worse in science than non-users.

However, those who used AI for general learning and received AI literacy training at school scored slightly higher.

Mathias Cormann, OECD’s secretary general, said the data showed that “reversing declines in student performance is urgent”.

Technology and AI must be used purposefully rather than as “a substitute for attention, effort and understanding”, he added.

Full story in case of paywall

SCMP Reporter

Published: 4:31pm, 10 Sep 2026 | Updated: 4:39pm, 10 Sep 2026

Hundreds of Thais, led by a veteran political activist, rallied outside the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok on Thursday in a rare public protest against a group of foreign nationals.

The protest follows months of complaints about illegal landholding, disrespect towards local culture and proliferation of religious houses for Israelis, echoing those made by some locals in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Israelis have been flocking to Thailand since the war on Gaza that followed the October 7 Hamas assault on their country. Many are service personnel from the Israel Defence Forces seeking respite from a war that has killed over 70,000 Palestinians and left around 2 million more stranded on the strip without food and water.

In a country with hair-trigger sensitivities over sovereignty, allegations that swathes of prime Thai land have been sold illegally to Israelis have raised uproar. Disputes between Thais and Israelis – mainly on the islands of Phangan and Samui and the mountain retreat of Pai – over non-payment of bills, public misbehaviour and pro-Palestine flags at some Thai businesses have gone viral, adding to the tensions.

Thursday’s protest – which saw an angry crowd waving a sea of Thai tricolours and banners saying “Save Thailand”, “Thailand Is Not For Sale” and “This is Not The Promised Land”, alongside some plainly antisemitic placards – was led by firebrand Sondhi Limthongkul.

The controversial 78-year-old former media mogul and conservative “Yellow Shirt” hardliner, who was at the crux of Thailand’s long and bloody years of street politics, can still draw a large crowd.

Thailand has a long-standing tradition of “extending warm hospitality to foreign visitors”, he said. “However, let it be clearly understood by the embassy and the government of Israel that generosity must never be mistaken for weakness.”

Accusing Israelis of wanting to “occupy our country, building your own community”, he added: “Hospitality does not equate to submission to exploitation, and courtesy is not an open licence for anyone to act with impunity on our sovereign soil.”

“Widespread grievances” committed by Israeli residents and tourists “include violations of domestic law, public disturbance, disrespect towards local traditions and culture as well as recurring payment default and service-related fraud”, he added.

“The patience of the Thai people has reached a limit.”

Sondhi’s return to frontline protest is a significant development in a country where street politics and hyper-nationalism have helped topple governments, shape policy pivots and fanned conflict with neighbours over the years.

He gave a letter to the embassy and called on the Thai government to take “concrete actions” to root out illegal businesses and end what he described as a culture of “disdain towards their [Thai] hosts”.

His campaign, called “Take Thailand Back”, would continue with another protest against alleged “grey” businesses in the country, he said.

Other leading nationalist figures joined the rally, uniting in a show of patriotism that pointed to the widening rancour.

‘Not looking to invade’

Ahead of the protest, Israel’s ambassador to Thailand Alona Fisher-Kamm tried to assuage anger by addressing what she said was misinformation driving some of the viral episodes that have enraged Thais.

A small minority of Israeli visitors had behaved badly, she acknowledged, but insisted there was no attempt at “colonisation”, suggesting outside instigators were brewing up hostility against Israeli nationals.

“The vast majority of Israeli tourists are good tourists, they don’t provoke and there is no conflict and they are well welcomed by Thais,” she told PPTV on September 3. “We see cases of misunderstanding or of Israelis who might be badly behaved because they don’t understand the culture, or do not know the law as well.”

She said Israelis were briefed on dos and don’ts before arrival in Thailand and inside the country, insisting the embassy was “not going to protect anyone” found to have transgressed Thai laws.

The core allegation among many of Thursday’s protesters is that Israeli nationals used nominee relationships to secure Thai-only land. That loophole, now closing fast after a string of scandals, has seen foreign nationals buy majority shares in land restricted to Thais by paying locals to be silent partners.

Across the southern islands of Samui, Phangan and Phuket, Thais complain that the speed and scale of this action are freezing them out of their own territory.

One protester, who asked to remain anonymous, said “corrupt Thais had sold off the country, but that doesn’t mean we have to take the insult of Israelis who treat us like we are dirt”.

The Israeli ambassador, however, refuted the idea of nominee holdings as “an Israeli phenomenon”.

“Singling out Israelis or saying that the vast majority of cases are Israelis that have nominees or have any kind of illegal business, I think it is misleading,” Fisher-Kamm said. “Everything in Thailand is Thai territory, it has nothing to do with Israeli territory, Israelis are not looking to invade Thai territories.”

 On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow met Fisher-Kamm for what he described as “frank” discussions and warned that ties between the countries could become strained if more flashpoints between Thais and Israelis occurred.

“Visitors must understand and respect Thai culture and traditions,” he told reporters after the meeting. But he also urged the public not to hold the actions of the few against all Israelis.

There were around 31,000 Israeli nationals in Thailand as of March, the Immigration Bureau said. A total of 420,202 Israelis visited the country last year, most of whom left after a short stay, it added.

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Meredith Chen

Published: 9:00am, 8 Sep 2026 | Updated: 10:03am, 8 Sep 2026

Calls to reduce English’s status as a core subject in China’s education system have resurfaced after an internet-famous maths teacher urged the country to end “worshipping foreign things”.

The controversy has revived a long-running debate over the role of English in Chinese schools.

The argument came to life again after Tang Jiafeng, a maths teacher known for coaching students through the national postgraduate entrance exam, said on social media that children, parents and schools had devoted disproportionate amounts of time and resources to English, a subject he argued had little relevance to the jobs most people eventually did.

“I publicly call for English to be stripped of its status as a core subject,” Tang wrote on Saturday. “No country in the world places English in such a supreme position as we do.”

He argued that Chinese children were being pushed to cram in English before they had even mastered their own language, despite the country’s thousands of years of civilisation.

“English is just a tool. It is enough to know how to use it,” Tang said. “The history of Chinese people worshipping foreign things and fawning over foreigners should end!”

His remarks came after history was reduced in weight as a subject in local exam reforms, a decision he said left him “heavy-hearted”.

History lessons helped students remember the hardships of earlier generations and develop sound values, Tang said, adding that if any subject deserved to be assigned less weight, it should be English rather than history.

At present, English is a core subject in China’s basic education system, alongside Chinese and mathematics. In the traditional 750-point structure of the gaokao, the national college entrance examination, each of the three subjects is worth 150 points.

While the weighting and assessment of other subjects have been reshaped in recent years as part of reforms to the gaokao and the zhongkao – the national high school entrance examination – the three subjects have stayed central to China’s exam-oriented education system.

Meanwhile, history has seen its prominence diminished in some recent local reforms, with fewer and fewer students choosing to study it as a gaokao elective.

Not everyone agreed with Tang.

Former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin said those who denounced English learning as “worshipping foreign things” and sought to remove it as a core subject were “extreme”, “narrow-minded” and using nationalist rhetoric to portray their position as patriotic and morally justified.

Also taking to social media on Saturday, Hu said English should remain a core subject because it could give students access to international knowledge and opportunities across a range of fields.

Weakening English in basic public education could undermine educational equality, he added, saying that wealthier families would still be able to pay for private English education while students from less privileged backgrounds would lose access to the same opportunities.

“Basic education should leave everyone room to advance as far as they possibly can,” the former editor said. “This is not about ‘worshipping foreign things’; it is about educational equality at the starting point of real life.”

English’s global dominance reflected the West’s historical lead in modernisation, Hu said, and Chinese would naturally gain influence as the country kept ascending.

He warned that trying to “accelerate that shift through administrative measures” or nationalist rhetoric could backfire and stir “unnecessary ideological controversy”.

Calls to cut English’s weight in the gaokao have surfaced in recent years.

In the past few editions of the “two sessions” – China’s largest annual political gathering – some political advisers and lawmakers have proposed reducing English’s score in the exam, dropping its core-subject status and making it an elective.

The debate has intensified alongside growing confidence in China’s economic and technological standing.

Supporters of demoting English often invoke growing “cultural confidence”, saying the expanding global use of Chinese, combined with advances in AI translation, reduce the need for such intensive English-language education.

Others question the effectiveness of China’s heavily exam-oriented approach to English teaching, saying students could spend years memorising vocabulary and grammar for tests without developing an ability to communicate confidently in real-life situations. The phenomenon is often described in China as “mute English”.

The 2025 EF English Proficiency Index, an annual ranking of adult English skills based on test results in 2024 from more than 2.2 million people worldwide, placed China 86th out of 123 countries and regions – in the “low proficiency” category.

The content of English teaching itself has also shifted, according to some critics, with Chinese textbooks and classrooms placing greater emphasis on Chinese history, culture and domestic achievements, and less on Western society and international culture.

The changes undercut one of the original purposes of learning a foreign language, which was giving students a window to the outside world, they said.