One of the few sensible goals would be teaching students about security. Teach about importance of A/V, firewall, not becoming a phishing victim, etc. Subject the students to real tests of their security savvy. Teach hacking, too, and reward students that find and report security holes on the school network. Teach students about how the monitoring works and encourage them to find ways around the monitoring, backed by rewards. Openly share these finds with other students after closing the holes. Deviously, you can get your students to do security evaluations of your network for very little compensation.

I hardly find it surprising the senior officer wanted a second opinion to "news" derived from the official spin put out by Chinese government officials.