Honestly, you failed to request for more/better.
If you had taken LX, with the delay from Xiamen you would have missed your LX flight as well, the only difference being that on LX they would have only been able to put you on the next LX flight 24hours later.
So honestly CX is definitely a way better option when flying out of China and dealing with delays / missed flights. Just as LX would be the better option when flying out of Europe and dealing with delay's over there.
I agree, or LX might put you onto SK/OS which departs also in the morning at around 10am, similar time as CX257.
Instead, I would also suggest consider flying long-haul from China and connect in Europe. Both KLM and XiamenAir flies to Amsterdam from Xiamen directly. In case where the flight is delayed (oh! and long-haul flights from China are delayed less frequent than short-haul flights in general), you will be stuck at Amsterdam where there are a lot more flights to Zurich than from Hong Kong.