Pottinger’s speech strikes me as something that would have been appropriate under Hu, but that is far too removed for the present day.

One tic of conservative China-hands that he recapitulates is an anger that seems to stem primarily from the Party’s unwillingness to pay lip service to a western rhetoric of human rights, and only secondarily opposes the actual violation of people’s rights. The speech as a whole struck me as smarmy and overly abstract.