What exactly does "hub" mean in this context? Presumably, since Anderson mentioned AMS, it mostly means DL flying from a bunch of US cities to feed their partner's hub flights in a coordinated way (the sensible way to run an overseas hub in this environment, since the economics of maintaining a dedicated fleet as in NRT have limited-if-any value thanks to relatively small planes that can fly from the US directly to major Asian cities). But Delta can't form a joint venture with any Chinese airline unless the US and China form an open skies pact, which seems unlikely to say the least. So this really sounds like Delta planning to have flights from most or all of their US hubs to PVG and have an increasing fraction of those passengers connect onward on Chinese partners. Not exactly ground-breaking, unless I misunderstand what they're saying.

The only way it's interesting is that Delta has moved away from feeding any traffic on to non-joint venture partners if they can possibly help it in most other markets.