No, you're actually making the mistake of conflating China with the rest of Asia. Japan, which also has a high-context culture, has paid upfront for games for decades. And it wasn't just that free-to-play games were popular in China first, it's that paid games could never turn a profit because people would pirate them. There's a huge difference between people not using a product and people using it without paying for it.

The primary reason why free-to-play games became popular in the West is because the $0.99 floor that Apple set for the App Store drove consumer psychology regarding app purchases, which made it difficult to turn a profit in any other way. Just take a look at Steam to see how much money is being made from non-freemium games.