How is this the case? Star has 14 members and I thought they served many more places
Redundancy. Where does TG fly outside of Thailand that no other star alliance carrier flies? That makes one country that the other carriers already fly to. Between UA, LH, VG, and SQ, they probably cover 95% of their country route network.
Is it just a coincidence that oneworld's meeting was in Hong Kong? There's no Star carrier from Shanghai.
I admit that I don't see the connection, but probably not. The last one was in Santiago, so I would imagine it has more to do with hub cities.