I fly to China quite often from Austin, it's not that bad, you do AUS-DFW-PVR,PEK... you only lose an hour or so for the short hop, the DFW-China leg is basical

I fly to China quite often from Austin, it's not that bad, you do AUS-DFW-PVR,PEK... you only lose an hour or so for the short hop, the DFW-China leg is basically the same from SFO Also from AUS, you have Houston and Dallas as two big airport options to get to China.