“This is about establishing a database for other reasons.”
What other reasons?
Sources for information comes immediately to my mind.
A persons name.
Where they live.
What Department/agency they work for
What job they do there
What level security clearance they hold
If EQIP is included all the information on their security clearance paperwork. So family members names and info, financial info, where they went to school, things like past arrests, etc.
So the ChiComs can very narrowly target potential assets, develop profiles on them, find weak points to use to develop (either through extortion and/or incentives) to develop them AS assets.
In a completely proactive manner. Think of all the convicted spies (Walkers, Hansen, Ames) who were the ones who initiated the contact. Basically fell into the laps of the Soviets. The ChiComs don’t need to rely on that, with this they can develop assets through active outreach methods.