Nobody at DL will get promoted for interpreting the written word in TIMATIC. Of course DL could have done a lot better here. In particular, as a TPAC carrier, it should, at a management / legal / compliance level carefully parse the language of TIMATIC, especially after a significant change such as TWOV.

That does not excuse the importance of clarifying all of this in TIMATIC and that rests with the Chinese government which must instruct IATA directly.

Remember, while this incident happened at an international gateway, documents are also checked at the point of origin. That could well be a domestic DLX-only station with a single agent who pulls up the same language.