She has decided to use words with strong connotative meanings because she knows they will help her arouse an emotional response.
Explanation:
What Zhu is doing is a well-known rhetoric appeal called pathos. She wants to provoke an emotional response in her audience with the purpose of convincing them of her point of view. To create the concern she wishes, she must use strong connotative words that will help impact the audience. If she can get them to visualize and "feel" - at least in their imagination - how awful the infringements on civil liberties are, she will most likely infuse them with apprehension.
