Beyond that, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Anyway, words don't always mean what they used to mean. I get a morbid kick out of the way the word has been diminished and degraded by everyone from mass murderers to corporate villains saying that they feel bad if they made you feel bad by wiping out your family or neighborhood. New apologies are often just another way of blaming the victim big-time. In fact, if one views this as a strict constructionist, the Chinese are right in demanding an apology.
New dictionaries take weasel-talk into account in their definitions.
Things like that tend to bother sensitive people, if they survive. We might be offended a bit if Chinese planes were coming around all the time to photograph us or to listen to us flushing the toilet or whatever. The offense, in their minds, seems to be spying itself. Well, I suppose we do. But there are unpleasant doings that demand a little more serious contemplation than moving on.