Go look up Freescale, they do a LOT more than aircraft related stuff.... they are a broad semiconductor company supplying and designing components from aircraft to computers to telephones to everything and anything in between.
Given China's status as a major manufacturing centre for many companies, its perhaps no surprise that bunches of engineers from a major semiconductor company fly there on a regular basis. Freescale have something like 18,000 employees.... sending 20 employees somewhere is no big deal !
Don't believe all the nonsense journalists publish, and certainly don't read too much into it !
Agreed, chasing the Freescale angle as some sort of target for the hijacking is a waste of time. The employees on board were
12 Malaysian and 8 Chinese with titles like
'Test 1 Process Engineer' and 'Test 1 Manufacturing Manager.' Not exactly janitorial staff or cafeteria workers, sure, but not exactly rare talents in the countries that contain a massive portion of the semiconductor manufacturing facilities on Earth today.
If you had some burning desire to learn Freescale's industrial secrets when it comes to improvement of semiconductor manufacturing processes, surely offering a pay rise and a signing bonus would be simpler than some complicated plot to hijack an airliner, make it disappear, and torture the passengers until they spill the beans.