The order of the last name shows the importance of your family over yourself. Family is far more important over there because it better shields you from society, while simultaneously contributing to the ills of society, i.e. too much self interest vs concern for the whole society; leading to a very difficult to break circular pattern of corruption.
Yes Japan is very different from China if not most of Asia. It's also not hard to see that Japan probably adopted the naming order since they also adopted the Chinese writing system.
I'm Chinese. I was born in Asia and I still routinely visit and keep in touch with my family over there.
To be clear, I'm not saying every Chinese person in China is like this, nor am I saying that it will always be like this. Looking at both HK and Taiwan, things will eventually change for the better in the long term; especially when you consider the long term effects of the one child policy. However (speaking to fellow Chinese people) what I'm describing is real and there's no use in ignoring it, and I feel that there's value in helping people, who aren't of Asian, Hispanic, or Mediterranean (Italian, Greek, etc...) background; to understand it.
