First...The article said X number of people were
APPROACHED, not that China wanted X number of spies.
Second...The article said the X number of people were in key industries, notably technology.
But does it mean China does not want 20,000 citizens of a country working for China? Of course, yes. Who would be stupid to turn anyone away?
As for how much info does an 'average' person has, a long time ago, I was friend with a cryptolinguist, that is someone who listens to foreign radio and translate what he hears. He gave me an example of anything regarding crypto.
"We are having a great time at Disneyland."
The keywords for anyone intercepted that message are: 'We', 'at', and 'Disneyland'.
I do not care if you are having a 'great time' or not. The word 'We' mean a group so most likely a family, and the words 'at Disneyland' means many days away from home. So now I can burglar your house and I have several days to do it.
Intelligence collection is nothing like the movies where someone meet someone and they talk and talk for hrs. It is about collecting disparate bits of information from different sources who are unaware of each other, then put all those bits together and try to make sense of everything. Just like the 'Disneyland' message above, all I need is just enough for me to make an educated guess. Three words out of eight. Less than %50 and that enabled me to burglar your house.
This just goes to show how shortsighted you are. So what if the technology at 200 mm is old. That the fab is in production is indicative of a customer list for its products. The more you know about its products, the better you can find out who are on that customer list. The opportunities are abundant.
So either you are too stupid and talks of something you know nothing about, or that you are hilariously trying to cover for your China.
No, it is not stupid. In fact, it is smart, especially in this day of social media. It is like those bulk Nigerian prince email scam. All they need is just a few gullible few out of the hundreds of thousands emails sent.