Well, isn't it common knowledge that in case of IRROPS, the airline is not responsible, and will tell you to contact your 3rd-party travel agent with whom you booked the itinerary? That's my concern.
With trip.com they can rebook you on any other airline ASAP pretty quickly. With the mainland chinese airlines, you'll have a difficult time even getting ahold of them and you can guess they'll be pretty strict on rebooking on their own metal only.