True, flights in that region are generally longer. As I like to remind my European colleagues, generally flights between any 2 Asian countries are almost equivalent to flying across the entire European continent.
The shortest legs I have taken are either Kuala Lumpur - Singapore and HKG - Taiwan which are slightly less than an hour and nobody bothers to recline on those.
But on anything else, people may or may not recline - their choice. For those who do, it never becomes an issue.
I flew a very long leg on Japan Airlines. Everyone reclined “over night”, and when breakfast was served they told everyone to bring their seats up, and as best as I could tell, everyone kept their seats up for the rest of the trip.
Because it was such a long flight, there was room to recline, though. The pitch between the seats was much larger than for a typical short domestic flight in the US.