First of all, it demonstrated the aggression at that point that China decided to send as a message. We have to understand the way the Chinese government functions with its intelligence services, which is almost in direct line with the central committee that basically gives the marching orders for them.
It also sends the message to the entire diaspora, everybody who is of Chinese descent, that they must collaborate if it comes to them and asks them to collaborate, period, which could potentially make them traitors to the country where they reside, to a certain extent. There is a conflict of interest here that is forced on the people abroad. That is a form of pressure that is exercised on the community.
Unfortunately, understanding how the Chinese intelligence services function and how the Chinese government functions still eludes a lot of the western intelligence agencies, particularly CSIS. CSIS has a long history of being Eurocentric. We worked for decades during the cold war on Russia, and we tend to analyze the intelligence world from a Russian or Eurocentric perspective. The Chinese don't work like this. They work very differently. They have time on their hands because the government is never elected—it just stays on—so the operation can last for five, 10, 15, 20 years. They have no problem.