It could help his project team quickly iterate early on. Bonn University just happens to have done a lot of work in this area, which can help them quickly overcome the project's lack of a rich early-stage database.
Although domestic universities and the Huaxia Science Academy also have related research, for Qiao Yu, accessing those local datasets is straightforward.
He has quite good relationships in the domestic scientific community. Especially close with those managing various natural science funds—at least he considers them close.
Moreover, most of the related research in the country is funded by various science funds, and since he's now working on a national key project, he can easily find someone to help coordinate when he wants to access domestic data.
For instance, Zheng Xiweng, who has been by his side all along.
Resources from abroad, however, are a bit more troublesome to obtain.
