This study examines the dismissive characterisation of East Asian PISA success in Australia to extend the emerging conceptual work on policy learning/referencing, reference society, and projection in comparative and international education. By highlighting the constitutive roles of racialisation and colonial difference in the media construction of East Asian education, I expose the limits of the ongoing conceptual work and problematise its exclusive focus on stereotyping in the negative framing. I argue that the discussion of East Asian education as a policy reference must be placed within a global history of colonial difference and racialisation in Eurocentric imaginaries.