> In my experience, people in the United States often (incorrectly) short hand East Asia as Asia just like the people in the city of New York will often (correctly) short hand New York City as New York.
In my experience, the only demographic who complains about “Asia = east Asia” are people from South Asia, aka Indians/desis
Ironically (for my generation in the UK at least) "Asian" meant "South Asian" and for a long time we didn't have a useful shorthand for "all parts of Asia"
That might be a local thing, Hong Kong being a British colony means there's plenty of people in the UK for whom Asian means Chinese.
People from South Asia are not "aka Indians". There are other countries.
We aren't the only ones, but we are the loudest about it, because erasure sucks.
Don't get me started about Macedonia.