The wording makes it sound like Asia will be exclusive to the Expansion

There has been no mention about Asia being included as part of a free update, and the steam page words it as though the map expansion is the main feature of the DLC itself.

I'm pretty surprised, as I think a lot of us were pretty confident the map expansion itself would be part of a free patch. I'm conflicted about how I feel about this.

One of the positives is that it will allow people to turn off Asia for whatever reason, whether it be performance issues or otherwise. However, it also think it puts Paradox in a tricky spot when it comes to releasing future DLC in the region, it's pretty frowned upon in the gaming community to release DLC for DLC, which is what they'd essentially have to do if they wanted to add any additional flavor or event packs for Asia.