[isynge]

Echoing the question re China is the actual reason -
- There are regulatory issues stopping them raising in the PRC (IMO unlikely)?
- Circuits in China are overtly unwilling to hold a long distance sportscar race?
- Teams have been unwilling to go?
- Up to now they have not held a race there?

If the point is that the ACO has, thus far, not successfully run a race in China then fair enough. If it's more profound I'd be interested in more details about what might be going on here.

I don't think they need to go all the way to the Middle East (which geographically if nothing else is still undeniably Asia) to find non Japanese tracks either - Malaysia could do a perfectly decent job here.

Finally - the Asian series has one key advantage over the abortive JLMC - it has auto invites to Le Mans - this, combined with the ACO helping with freight, makes a Japan only series perfectly feasible in the short term, and by not being regionally specific in the name keeps the door open to races elsewhere.