You have the deeply rooted in racism towards Asian people in media portrayal to thank. Asian women have been for a very long time stereotyped in western media as 1 of the 2 things that are absurdly polar opposite: She's either the super dominant femme fatale "dragon lady", or she's the overly submissive "china doll"/"Yamato nadeshiko".
I must stress that to this day, it's quite rare that an Asian character, male or female or whatever, to appear in western media to not be an historical caricature of some kind. Most of them are written as if their characters both begins and ends at the frankly offensive stereotypes. Remember I just mentioned that stereotypes can involve portrayals that are directly opposite from each other? It's a pretty common theme for the people within demographic that is somehow socially acceptable to be openly discriminated against which they have to deal with on a daily basis, such as Asians, South Americans, etc. But I'm heading off the tangent here.
When Asian female characters are portrayed in the vein of the super dominant femme fatale "dragon lady", it is typical to portray her as strong and independent which so far so good, but that is only to serve the more sinister motive of portraying them as overly aggressive, manipulative, and inherently treacherous.
As much as I enjoyed the recent movie Skyscraper starring Dwayne Johnson trying to save his family members from the fictional tallest building in the world in China called "The Pearl" built and owned by a Chinese billionaire that is being burned down by a terrorist group (the movie despite its average critical reception and some of the action scenes were admittedly bullshit like when Dwayne Johnson completely anti-climatic jumping through spinning blades scene, is surprisingly okay especially on the overall characterisation of all the different characters and the plot is concise and gets to the point. I recommend a watch), but I can not for the life of me ignore the fact the whole of the terrorist group sacking the The Pearl has only a single woman and she's Chinese for whatever reason who just joins in to sack another fellow Chinese billionaire because why not I guess (the actress is of diverse heritage of Chinese-Australian herself, but her role design in Skyscraper made attempt to suggests that she's Chinese-Chinese or something along that line. And I have to go by "suggest" because she had ZERO character, which I'll get to right below). That is a pretty textbook example of a "dragon lady" Asian female archetype used in abundance in media.
- I had to actually look up the name of the character she played (which is a single Chinese word which I have to assume it's a nickname but it really isn't all that memorable) and she had like 1 line in the entire movie. I don't think her backstory or motive of any sort is explored in any way either. She was literally just there like a prop like a glorified background character like the other nameless dudes on the terrorist group in the movie, except she gets just slightly bit more attention than actual props. I'm sure I don't need to elaborate on the issue with that, remember "Katana" from Suicide Squad? Yeah, me neither. But then, the whole movie is forgettable save for Slipknot, so I guess I can't blame her too much.
And Akali is no different. Akali was re-written to include the development of her ditching the Kinkou Order and going rogue because she sees her old time mentor Shen as "weak", complete with her getting an actual dragon tattoo for a reason. And ofc, in the Project universe I guess she has to be a double-agent. Gee, I wonder why.
The overly submissive "china doll"/"Yamato nadeshiko" is pretty much the same deal just from the other direction, pretty much. In that kind of portrayal Asian women characters are portrayed as damsel in distress like one of those really old-fashioned storytelling. It would be bad, sure, but it's only actually bad because here the prince in shining armour is almost always, a white character, and usually unironically saving them from the supposedly evil and oppressive Asian parents, culture, or whatever. I mean, one of the last example I even bother enough to remember is 2013's The Wolverine that was so insulting I had to stop the movie mid-way and never pick it up again (and Pacific Rim too, from the same year. I hadn't bothered with the sequel).
I rant this much because I want you to understand that this perverted fetishisation of Asian women seemingly have to """betray their kin""" (those fucked up writers' words, not mine) is a deep well and a special brand of dewhumanisation against certain minorities in the western writing circle for a very long time. I mean, it just takes a special kind of fucked up to beat off your beat thinking that women of a different background should ditch all of their heritage in whole and embrace you like the greatest thing to ever exist since Nutella. You'd think this kind of characterisation can be easily read as insulting and would've been reconsidered on the drawing board but pffff it's to do with Asian so who cares, I guess.
Don't get me started on the typical portrayals of Asian male characters, though.
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TLDR:
Portraying Akali as double-agent (and Classic Akali ditching her clan) comes at no surprise to anyone who remotely bothers with retrospectively looking at the characterisation (or the lack of characterisation) of Asian characters in western media, where Asian women are routinely portrayed as with a deeply rooted theme of being a ""traitor"" for 1 reason or the other.
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And yes, I'm crazy. So you can keep the cheap shots to yourself.
