Talking is not the same as capitulation, and sometimes the two get confused, particularly in public discourse.
I would agree with everything Gordon said, but I would add two caveats. One is that we shouldn't go soft. Diplomacy is about hard talk. It's not just sweet talk. I think that when it comes to China, as we saw with the declaration against arbitrary detention, we're much more effective when we engage in team talk, which is to say that we build coalitions, informal coalitions, and deliver the same message at the same time—in this case, to the Chinese, because they don't like to be called out in numbers.
That requires a very adroit diplomacy. It requires a strong diplomatic leadership, and it requires consistency. You don't deliver the message once. You have to deliver it many times over.