recall hearing one of the China carriers request 16 in MEL when the wind was a 30+ knot westerly with up to 10 knots of downwind.
Keg,
There is a reason for this, BA used to get into the same situation with their B747.
Some NAA (like UK CAA) set up the takeoff calculations such that a balanced field length, even at relatively low weights, cannot be achieved --- like B767 on less than (from memory) 1700m.
The other reason is that the YMML wind was more likely south westerly, giving a crosswind on RW 27 as well as RW16.
Again, an NAA problem, if Vmcg limited V1 has to take into account increased minimum Vmcg limited V1 in (even a quite small) crosswind, this will again eliminate using RW 27, for some carriers, because you cannot fit in a balanced field length.
The CAAC are really quite conservative.
There was an example of this sort of thing, years ago, in operating the B747SP into Wellington, you could not use full thrust on takeoff on such a short runway, because of the full rating Vmcg limited V1. However, with Rating 1 Vmcg limited V1, you could get a balanced field length with reasonable payloads. Sounds a bit counter intuitive, but there are some strange wrinkles in performance engineering.
Tootle pip!!