Knowledge is power ... provided we apply it correctly and intelligently.
I also thought that the offset is another form of radar controlled separation which will keep the conflicting traffic parallelly separated by a known distance. This is safer and would relief the controller of continually giving heading instructions to the pilots, especially so in a country where English is not widely spoken.
The Chinese controller could have instructed the Martinair crew to make a right hand orbit if he was nasty enough. Hehe.