That was my reading of it too. The suicides were only a side-effect of the real objective, and perhaps more credible in Asian culture where historically, suici

That was my reading of it too. The suicides were only a side-effect of the real objective, and perhaps more credible in Asian culture where historically, suicides were a means of redeeming oneself for a great failure, shame, or loss of face. But they were not the main objective of the Trisolarians’ intervention. The main objective was to sabotage particle accelerators and thus prevent humanity from understanding the full subatomic structure of matter, which is the key to scientific and technological advancement. Thus humanity would not be able to defend itself when the Trisolarian fleet arrived to colonize Earth 400yrs later.