I've confused you by switching between British brain and Australian brain ;-)
'Asian' very much still used for the Subcontinent in Britain, but never has been in Australia, who went the American route of using it for the whole continent, with an emphasis on East Asia and South-East Asia (which is where the majority of Australians of Asian descent come from). So the last census I looked at in the UK had 'Asian' and 'Chinese and other'. In Australia, IIRC, they list all the big nations for immigrants and then have a thing you can fill out if you don't get a box to tick (so China, India, Vietnam, Japan and a few others all get their own boxes, but Bangladesh, Laos and the rest have to be write-ins.)
Pacific Islander is the group that I had to get my head around when I moved here, because I hadn't realised how many distinctive cultures there were and how very different some where, while others were quite similar. New Zealand is the centre of the Pacific Island diaspora, but then Australia gets lots of Kiwis for 5-10 years while they come over for higher-paying jobs before going back to raise kids at home. Never suggest that a Tongan might be a Maori. Islander all the way!
As for Black, it's always been the right word in the countries I've lived in, and my girlfriend who went to the US for a good job eventually left because if one more person called her African American, she was going to disembowel them with her hands. But in the US, there's a different history to the word that makes it more difficult. One day it will all be academic and we'll just refer to people by their names or the quality of their smartphones …
I think that Asian is a pretty decent word, though, it's just geographic, like European. Though having said that, I reckon you are what you think you are. Most of my friends of Chinese descent here are just Australians, and all of my friends whose ancestors came over from the West Indies back home are just British. It's up to you!
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'Asian' very much still used for the Subcontinent in Britain, but never has been in Australia, who went the American route of using it for the whole continent, with an emphasis on East Asia and South-East Asia (which is where the majority of Australians of Asian descent come from). So the last census I looked at in the UK had 'Asian' and 'Chinese and other'. In Australia, IIRC, they list all the big nations for immigrants and then have a thing you can fill out if you don't get a box to tick (so China, India, Vietnam, Japan and a few others all get their own boxes, but Bangladesh, Laos and the rest have to be write-ins.)
Pacific Islander is the group that I had to get my head around when I moved here, because I hadn't realised how many distinctive cultures there were and how very different some where, while others were quite similar. New Zealand is the centre of the Pacific Island diaspora, but then Australia gets lots of Kiwis for 5-10 years while they come over for higher-paying jobs before going back to raise kids at home. Never suggest that a Tongan might be a Maori. Islander all the way!
As for Black, it's always been the right word in the countries I've lived in, and my girlfriend who went to the US for a good job eventually left because if one more person called her African American, she was going to disembowel them with her hands. But in the US, there's a different history to the word that makes it more difficult. One day it will all be academic and we'll just refer to people by their names or the quality of their smartphones …
I think that Asian is a pretty decent word, though, it's just geographic, like European. Though having said that, I reckon you are what you think you are. Most of my friends of Chinese descent here are just Australians, and all of my friends whose ancestors came over from the West Indies back home are just British. It's up to you!