The Chinese Grand Prix is absent from the Formula 1 calendar for the third year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic but Mercedes boss Toto Wolff hopes it will one day host three races each season like America.
Wolff added that the sport can have a "strong footprint" in the country despite it lacking in motorsport culture, but insists it is a key market for F1 with a rapidly emerging middle class and lure as an attractive market for automakers.
Despite the coronavirus induced absence, F1 has also extended its contract with organisers of the Chinese Grand Prix until 2025 and there has long been talk of a second race in the country.
"We've been in Shanghai before and couldn't be there the last two years, but this is an important market for us," Wolff told Xinhua news agency at the FIA Formula E Championship in Monaco over the weekend.
"I'd like to not only race in Shanghai, I'd also like to race in Beijing. It's a fantastic market for us as Mercedes, and I believe we should be embedded there with a strong footprint.
"We have three races in the United States now - Las Vegas, Miami and Austin - and if we can do the same thing in China, that would be great."
China's first Formula One driver Guanyu Zhou enjoyed a superb start to his career at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix in March, as the Alfa Romeo rookie finished in the points on his debut.
Chinese drivers have tested F1 machinery before with Ma Qing Hua and Dutch-born Ho-Pin Tung, who was reserve for Renault in 2010 in another first.
The United States will hist two Grand Prix races this year, the first in Miami this weekend and the second at Circuit of the Americas in October; next year Las Vegas will make it three races on the calendar stateside.
The fundamental difference between motorsport in China and the USA is that the latter is a country steeped in racing culture and history.
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