George Duke wrote on Thu, Feb 24, 2011 10:21 PM UTC:
In his 150 cvs, most of which were made during 2000-2003 in desparation
before he left, Ralph Betza never made a Xiangqi and never made a Shogi
variant. He had too much sense, thinking if they do not make Xiangqi
variants in China much at all, why should westerners? Or Betza never did explicitly eastern cvs simply because he stayed on exactly 64 squares, another argument might run. For whatever reason the forbearance from designing narrow regional asian sub-forms, Betza did weigh in on them occasionally, having travelled to Japan.
General background: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=513.
Respect for east asian Go: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=888; the other 3 comments this thread show more Betza ideas especially on Go.