- OW needs a mainland Chinese carrier;
no one among OW members seemed/seems to care whether they need or not a chinese partner. Personally, after working for most of the last decade in China am quite skeptical about any outstanding advantage of having a partner on the mainland, given the still uneven quality of the industry here and the continuous bias towards the homegrown champions;
- the most significant unaligned mainland Chinese carrier is Hainan;
that does not make them automatically the best choice. Same could have been said about MU, when speculation was rife they were yo join OW;
- Hainan with Hong Kong Express competes directly on CX's home turf
on a slew of secondary destinations, that probably by itself are tied by some interests of their mainland owners. Let's see how they fare however with their announced service to London, although I am not holding my breath regarding the competition they may pose to CX
Irresistable force, meet immovable object.
could be said for any effort expended by western interests trying to exploit the almost magical 1.3bn chinese "consumers" (another fine sack of bollocks here that I am tired to heard about)