alt Hacker News> 1. You can think of this as a lighter version of Japanese office culture, but not limited to office... it's kind of everywhere in society.
Having worked in Japan, while there is a strong respect for authority, there's also much less hesitation about asking for clarification. I worked with an Indian offshore team and in a Japanese company and, while there's a lot to dislike in Japanese office culture, this kind of pattern of behaviour doesn't happen.
2 & 3 do make sense though.
I've had mixed result with your advice at the end. I'd say that it worked for about 30% of the offshore engineers I've worked with and indeed I had more success with juniors than with more senior developers.
Replies
I worked with a lot of Israelis and Eastern Europeans - They's say no and argue even when they agreed :) it was fine.
I also worked with japanese, including on site in Tokyo and quickly learned that asking "did you understand it?" is useless. I always had to keep in mind to ask "what did you understand?".