China as a country should be punished by the State. It has too many human rights abuses not to. However, I also think this applies to the US. The two punishing one another seems reasonable, but I cannot imagine one or the other cares about something as trivial as basic human rights.

In that case I would have to answer

>Is sentiment more important than correctness, or is the opposite true?

by saying that there's no advantage to punishing China unless the punishment is connected to the human rights abuses. If the US was saying "stop the abuses and we'll lift the tariffs" then that would be good. But they're not, so it isn't. The fact that the governments are committing abuses doesn't make it an inherently good thing that their citizens are being punished.