This is a very good guess.
In my experience, CA is probably the worst airline I've ever dealt with.
Just about everything about it was bad. The check in agent in JFK could not see PEK-KIX in her system. Her supervisor could, but couldn't do anything about it. He tried to explain it but his English was really bad. As an immigrant myself, I am very good at understanding accented speech, but this was ESL 101.
Then the flight itself. Is there really a need to serve a full 4-course dinner that takes an hour on a 2:30AM flight?
And then the morning "light second meal" (aka breakfast) with choices of lasagna, beef noodles, and dory fillet? which is served 3 hours before landing?
Of all flagship lounges I've been to, the only one worse than CA first class lounge in PEK is MS's pigsty in CAI.
But the transfer was by far the worst. We barely made a 4.5hr CA-CA connection. Completely ridiculous.