I may know why:

1) You made the mistake of not reporting on the spot. When you take the luggage home the responsibility is on you, and airline can easily deny everything.

2) Even at an out port, there are (or should be) Cathay staff (even if they are temp hires) that you can report to, and ask them to give you a report in writing.

3) Then, with the report, file a complain to Cathay/Dragon, only then will they promptly respond to you.

I made that mistake once in JFK and Cathay completely ignored me (I wrote them 3 times), and I am Diamond member. Finally a call into Cathay they politely but firmly explained to me because I took the luggage home without reporting on the spot, they firmly reply they can "investigate" but since I didn't do it on the spot, it's going to be hard to proof. Yep, went no where. Every since then if there's anything that is wrong with my luggage, I always made sure to flag down a Cathay staff ASAP.

Same blame game
 

I had a similar experience with JAL many years ago. The suitcase was torn on one side, we wanted to get home and reported it later. Same concept; like we would rip open one side and only notice it after we got home.

I do understand the " we can not really take your word on what is missing " bit , but i would be more then accepting for a reply saying sorry and we will look into it. The flight arrived late in PEK at 1am and yes there was staff at the gate after arriving but after immigration no staff even contracted staff were visible when the damage/theft was noticed. :rolleyes:

This just happened to me. Flew NGO-HKG and one of the suitcases arrived with a broken zipper. And whoever opened it didn’t even close it correctly. Once I opened the suitcase on the spot, it’s pretty obvious that someone has opened it. Glad that I asked everyone traveling with me to check their suitcases on the spot and report it before we left the baggage claim area. Will see what CX going to say but other than that fixing the suitcase, but tbh I don’t expect them to find out what happened.

Yup.