China has always been a major part of the Bitcoin economy, no one can deny that. However, with how things have been developing in terms of trading, it's safe to say that China shrinked down massively after the PBOC stepping in and ruining their fake volume party. China is no longer the central point of Bitcoin's popularity in Asia. Japan and South Korea are doing a pretty decent job in pushing the overall demand for Bitcoin to record highs. Look at South Korean exchange Bithumb for example, by total volume, they are the second largest exchange in the world, while most of the people here likely haven't even heard of this exchange. It makes all other major Bitcoin exchanges (i.e Kraken, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, GDAX, etc) look like a joke.
You are right.
I just can't help but think back that ever since China banned bitcoin a few dozen times, it has been a big part of bitcoin. It used to be a big part because people used it as FUD, but now, as you say, there is much more diversity in the number of countries in Asia that are aware of bitcoin. :-)
One hopes that the usability of bitcoin and wider adoption will continue. In my view, the script versioning that segwit enables (along with a few other improvements) will be another game changer since it allows developers to replace some of the op-codes disabled in 2010 which will then increase the functionality of the scripting language without the need for a hard fork.