Human microbiome scientist leaves troubled US Government agency for China

Are they leaving due to funding issues or are they simply completing their mission of espionage to extract knowledge from the US and bring it back to China? There has been a lot written about Chinese nationals performing espionage through government or corporate or academic positions in the US.

Also what makes this person a “top researcher” as the article claims versus just another academic with funding from NIH? Is this really some big loss or just an advertisement for this Chinese program to attract US researchers, centered around some random individual.