Not a native speaker, but while I would not have reacted, it is strange to use a term some negatively connoted instead of "Chinese man". I think the Englishman

Not a native speaker, but while I would not have reacted, it is strange to use a term some negatively connoted instead of "Chinese man". I think the Englishman comparison is not very smart. With the same logic, it's fine to use pedophile to refer to someone because it's grammatically constructed similarly to audiophile and no one never complained when associated to the word audiophile. I don't think a pejorative word (recognized as such in all modern dictionaries) stops to be pejorative because it exists a similar construction that is not pejorative. And I don't think you need to be the one accused to be a pedophile to be offended when you see someone uselessly accusing someone else to be a pedophile. (but again, I would probably not have reacted, and have given the benefice of the doubt to the interlocutor, assuming they were unaware of the pejorative connotation)