Economy fares earn rather poorly in QRs program, on QR as well as all partners. Only full-fare Y/B fares earn 100% miles. Still-pricey next three fare buckets down (H,K,M) 75%, the most prevalent ones (G,L,N,S,V) 50% and the cheapest ones a meager 25%.
This, btw, is exactly the same one would earn crediting QR flights to AA, so they don't treat their own members better than partners'.

Hey, it's Sunday morning, so let's have some fun and use a real-world example of, say, a return HKG-DOH-FRA flight, flying cheapest economy.
On QR, that'll earn you 70 Qpoints (needed for status qualification). You will qualify for Gold (their Sapphire level, which is the one you want) halfway into your 5th return flight on this route. While that is in line with other OW programs, you would earn a crap-tastic 3,380 redeemable Qmiles (25%, remember!) only.

An upgrade to business class will cost you 120,000 of those precious Qmiles, an award ticket 160,000. That means you will earn one upgrade to business after 'enjoying' the back of the plane for 35 flights on this route respectively will have earned one free flight in business after 47 flights! This will halve with the most common economy fare classes as these earn double the miles than the cheapest tickets, but still even then you'll need to fly this long-haul route back-and-forth 18 times on a reasonably priced economy ticket before you have enough miles to upgrade the 19th flight to business. Which totally discredits this program for anyone flying on discount economy tickets.
Your miles would expire before you could use them if you only flew discount economy on QR.

Crediting to AA, flying the same route on QR you would earn the same paltry 3380 miles, BUT an award ticket in business class is just 52,500 miles, so you will have earned a free flight on our 16th flight.
BTW, if you flew this route on BA (HKG-LHR-FRA), you would earn 12,988 miles, enough for a business class award after just four flights! (Well, four, plus a 600-mile shorthaul...). You would also qualify for OW Sapphire status after four flights.

Bottom line: for people who (have to) fly economy, the QR program has a terrible earning rate, combined with expensive redemptions. Play around with their mileage calculator and the fare classes you usually buy to check if this could make sense for you.


BAEC is heading the same way with their April devaluation (greatly reduced earnings for discount economy fares), BTW. At the moment, AAdvantage members earn better on BA flights in discount economy than they do in BAEC. The big question is when and how will AA will follow this trend and institute a massive devaluation as well.
Not that AA is always the best option, especially for someone located in HKG and likely to fly CX: Only the two most expensive fare classes earn ANY miles in AAdvantage when flying CX, That's right - everything except full-fare Y/B earns zero AA miles.