An interesting move. Something that drives me crazy when interacting with China, is that I can only use American payment methods to make a payment from Europe to China. I pay a fee and the merchant pays a fee both to the US. It just sounds broken. I hope this is a step in eventually resolving this.
You did not make an effort to switch and resorted to the easiest payment method.
Unionpay for example, allows clearing directly in Chinese Yuan and most Chinese native merchants accept them.
I would imagine a big reason for not making the effort was convenience. If they make Unionpay more convenient to use then people will likely be more likely to switch.