Cathay of course needs to avoid risking a situation where it employs cabin crew from China who’s command of conversational English is not proficient enough to be able serve the majority of its passengers properly or worse becomes frustrated.
I have had a business in China for the past over 30 years and our more educated and senior staff speak English very well indeed however go along to a government office, a shop, a restaurant or fly internally with a mainland based airline and the standard of English (if any)is poor.
Possibly Cathay can tempt cabin crew from that fly internationally with Chinese airlines or maybe draw on some of Air China’s English speaking crew (Cathay owns a large chunk of the airline and trains some Air China crew) as well as the perhaps the easier option of more crew ex Singapore and Taiwan.
