They're Western savvy enough to know that when in doubt, play the oppressed victim card. They are completely attempting to gloss over their logical conclusion that US airlines should have pretty much just liquidated after 9-11 and they could just be doing it all…provided we pay them to take our jets and borrow from them to defend them at our expense.
An ironic [victim] response given the building exposure and pressure on their modern day nuevo medieval labor standards, let alone their megalomaniac business model and merchant marine ambitions.
The only thing we should be sorry for is not limiting them to the number of flights per day that our airlines do to their actual country, not trying to shut down the facist "Bank of Boeing" widebody subsidies sooner, and not changing our tax law to eliminate the expat loophole that they use as a primary recruitment tool against us in an effort to poach our industry out from under us.