What is this weird notion of "respecting sensitive issues"?
Is that just a polite way of saying, "I don't discuss human and civil rights violations." Why should I respect a person's desire to not hear about their own government's crimes?
What makes the problem so challenging to fix is that it's not an inherently weird notion. I respect sensitive issues all the time; I don't make light of tragedies around people who've recently experienced them, I don't discuss controversial issues at quiet dinner parties, and so on. The Chinese government has just hijacked that entirely natural mechanism to justify driving some conversations out of the public sphere entirely.
Is that just a polite way of saying, "I don't discuss human and civil rights violations." Why should I respect a person's desire to not hear about their own government's crimes?