Except Asian cultures don't originally see themselves as "yellow" and Europeans as "white", because they're not trying to fit themselves into a black/white dichotomy that 18th century western scholars invented.

If you consider traditional art and literature of the region, you're not looking at characters painted like they fell out of a Simpsons episode or descriptions of individuals that harp on skin tone. Even modern arts - anime being an obvious example - don't have these sharp skin-tone disparities between Eastern and Western people. Its just not a thing Eastern block residents think about. The need to bucket people by skin tone is an extremely American fixation.