Young Chinese people often adopt English-language names to help out their foreign friends who struggle with the tones in Mandarin. It's like offering safe passage across a linguistic minefield. —PRI’s The World [online], 22 April 2014
The use of Western names thus serves as a buffer, to avoid being too formal and too intimate, and to avoid the embarrassing situation of addressing someone mistakenly as in downward communication. —DW Asia [online], 8 January 2016