Harry, Harry, Harry, you've got two things fundamentally wrong.
1) It's not Heathrow Airport people want to fly to per se, it's the London airport with the best connections and facilties which happens to be at LHR. T5 and T2 world class and whilst not ideal, it's getting there.
2) Domestic UK flights are needed to feed all the businessmen onto the Chinese flights in the first place. If they could survive on point to point alone, they could happily fly from Gatwick.
You seem very anti Heathrow given your username I must say.