The atmosphere of discussion about China now in a number of countries—the United States, Australia, and increasingly Canada—is polarized and angry. We are all reflecting the difficulties of our current bilateral problems with the People's Republic. We're angry about a number of behaviours, but the atmosphere, the vindictiveness of it, the attacks on social media on individuals, particularly those who are coming out in favour of an engagement strategy, is somewhat intense. It is an era that occasionally has elements of a McCarthy period at an earlier phase.
When the discussion is about one's views on one side of the issue or the other—engagement or adversary—that's an intellectual and policy debate, but when we get into matters of integrity and in fact the loyalty of individuals who are taking positions that try for nuance in understanding situations from a Chinese perspective even if we don't agree with that perspective, I think we are in a phase of our discussion on China that I haven't seen since we established diplomatic recognition in 1970.