I think it is part of the international understanding, which has already been stated, that basically, in the same way that China might want to just collect as much data as it can from the system, China has had a much more systematic way of sending Ph.D. students to Australia, the U.S., and, I presume, Canada. Those of us who are deemed to be leaders in our country end up with many Chinese students wanting to be our Ph.D. students.
With one of my very first Ph.D. students, I was working on a project with the police. It was in a public university, so it wasn't classified data. Nevertheless, without going into details, the IP was stolen and taken back to China. I was there, unfortunately, without knowing when it was handed over. Since that time, I have been very cautious about what's going on.