Interesting Liu said he reduced speed with F/O hanging out of the window. Very understandable. It would be a bit of a dilemma deciding what speed to descend at. The pax have 15mins O2. They can survive without O2 <15000', even 18000'. Priority would be to recover F/O. The interview suggested the whole manoeuvre might have been in manual control. Then very good piloting to navigate and land using raw data and manual control. One assumes ATC became workable once a lower level and slower speed and they could help with vectors.
A well done and medal required, plus pension enhancement. In fact a whip-round amongst the pax would be justified.