Are national Chinese and Hong Kong airlines ("one nation, two systems") treated differently as opposed to European, North American or other Asian airlines?
no, they're not. Both CAAC, chinese pilots, and chinese civilian ATCO are equally frustrated. The real root issue is this imho: China has lifted an unprecedented amount of people out of poverty, and there's a rapidly growing middle class that couldn't previously afford to fly, which fuels a huge growth in aviation. The military has always been the primary way to project power for the party, and is intimately interwined with the party, and they're very reluctant to give up their "old ways", even for seemingly innocent things like delegating something to civil ATC; laws/regulations/infrastructure/education can't keep up with the rapid economic growth. One communist official I know told me he feels managing the regulatory/legal/civil society changes is like riding a bicycle downhill on a steep slope...they know if they hit the brakes too hard they will fall, so they can't do that, but they're terrified of the speed and try to keep braking as much as they can.