Point taken. I did listen quite intently to your whole testimony, of course, but I was particularly interested when you talked about the need for liberal democracies to ensure that policies they take towards China do not have the impact of stoking anti-Chinese sentiment in their own societies. We've heard from other witnesses in previous meetings about the importance of that.
This is a regime that is markedly different from previous Chinese regimes. The administration under President Xi, according to many.... Our Parliament recognized it and the British Parliament has recently moved in the direction, and of course I'm speaking about the genocide of the Uighur minority. It is not just politicians who have put their opinion forward; it's leading observers of international law and human rights scholars—Irwin Cotler, for example.
With all that in mind, how can we, on the one hand, stand up as a country to China in a constructive way, in a way that's meaningful, but on the other hand avoid doing what you're cautioning against, a sort of narrow-minded approach that leads to hate sentiment and racism and limits the discussion to zero-sum outcomes, if I understand your position correctly? What would be your counsel on that?
If there's time, I'll ask the same question to Professor Houlden