FLEXPWR, I don't doubt your observations. I'm very selective about which airlines I travel on in Asia. I don't doubt that there are many risks to quality in many parts of the world right now. What bothers me is that there is no reliable properly analysed evidence of cause in this incident but people have already arrived at a conclusion which clearly reinforces racial and cultural biases. Even referring to the region as the "Far East" sends a culturally biased message.
There is no doubt safety standards in Asia in many industries fall behind the west. That is a recognised development issue. There has to be some recognition that these are developing economies and standards also are developing. There is also no doubt that western safety standards are under increasing pressure. Whether there is a significant regional difference in aviation safety requires more than anecdotal evidence. This region, and aviation generally, are in a period of significant flux.
The statistical reality is that revenue passenger kilometres are increasing almost exponentially at over 5.4 trillion kilometres per year (doubled in ten years) and a lot of that increase is in Asia. Yet global airline crashes continue to fall.
Anecdotally there is equally sufficient information to suggest lapse standards in other countries… a quick look at this forum reveals pilots accomplishing hands free nose first landings into the runway, taxiing a plane to the gate on smoking rims, undershooting runways by 500 metres, landing at the wrong airport, landing on taxi-ways, stalling airbuses, the list could go on. I can't help think there are some cognitive biases at work here. Maybe there is a difference in standards, maybe the difference isn't as big as people imagine.