Although there are no guarantees, it's possible that reasonably priced frequent-flyer award tickets for travel between CVG and WUH will open up in the next couple of months. AA, for example, charges 35K miles each way in Economy. AA partners with both Cathay Pacific and China Southern, both of which fly into WUH. I'm not seeing any award availability at the moment for CVG-WUH on the AA app, but China Southern award availability with AA miles cannot be searched online: a call to AA must be placed.

If the OP is credit-worthy and does not mind getting another credit card, here's an easy way to get 50,000 AA miles. (Until recently, the bonus was 60,000 miles, but it looks like Barclays changed that.)

https://www.applyaviator.com/

If one were to sign up and be approved for the card today, and then promptly made one purchase with the card when it arrived, miles would probably post to the cardholder's AAdvantage account by the end of April.

And if award availability never opened up to or from WUH, then the OP could use the miles for other award travel for himself or others.

Will the OP's son definitely be returning from WUH in August, or is there a possibility that he would enter graduate school in China before returning to CVG? (I have no idea how long the admissions process to graduate schools in China takes.) But unless the son already has been admitted to a Chinese graduate school by the time he enters China, Chinese authorities might require proof of a ticket out of China, unless the son also holds Chinese citizenship.