While everyone should respect each other's freedom of speech, we should not abuse this freedom and by making socially irresponsible statements to the public.

I refer, of course, to your columnist Josh Hong's loose and misleading claims in his Chinese racism: not quite in a nutshell which attempts to paint the Chinese as being 'racist'. Allow me to build on what Dr Catherine Yeoh has said.

First of all, for Hong to use a supposed 'joke' about Chinese Jews and 'juice' heard by him as a premise to mount a 'racist' allegation against a whole race is simply irresponsible and not to mention inflammatory.

As a matter of fact, people of the Jewish origin have been living in China for the past 900 years as part of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious civilisation there. Despite the passage of time, many of these Chinese Jews still preserve many elements of their religious identity such as the use of festive symbols resembling the six-point Star of David.

Lik all other ethnic or religious communities in the People's Republic of China, they are full and equal citizens. No joke there!

Many Chinese are still grateful to the many European Jews who resided in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing in the 1920s, 30s and 40s for saving Chinese lives from the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan's armies. In turn, many European Jews found China to be a zone of security during eras when European anti-Semitism, especially of the Third Reich, was rampant and genocidal.

Israel was one of the first few countries in the world that recognised the People's Republic of China and the two countries have since been maintaining diplomatic relations with embassies open in both Beijing and Tel Aviv.

Islam in China also has a long history of peaceful interaction with Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism since the Tang Dynasty. Muslims are, and have been, part of the Chinese polity with the Ming Dynasty's Admiral Zheng, a Muslim, visiting Malacca in the 15th century.

One of the three core elements of the Chinese culture is Buddhism which has its origins in India. The originally Confucian-Taoist Chinese culture has absorbed many Hindu elements. And so we see today many Chinese praying to Lord Buddha, the Monkey King (Hanuman) and the Goddess of Mercy or the Mother Kuan Yin (as in Air Hitam in Penang). These are all Indian in origin.

Christianity in China also has a long history with followers of the Syrian Church coming to China through the Silk Road during the reign of Tang Dynasty. Roman Catholicism was established in China during the Ming Dynasty and Anglo-American Protestantism, such as the Methodist and Presbyterian churches soon followed suit.

The father of modern China and republican revolutionary Dr Sun Yat Sen was, for instance, a American-educated Christian. I must also mention that the Communist Party of China was, in fact, founded on European ideology and Karl Marx and VI Lenin are still respected by the Chinese communists.

With these factual backgrounders, how can anyone with a reasonable amount of knowledge of China's history accuse the Chinese of being racist? I'm stumped!