Here is an interesting take on the situation from Taiwan based blogger, Michael Turton. Warning: Michael is un-apologetically pro-Taiwan, but I believe his take on this issue is quite astute:
Taken from shanghaiist.com
Context: China kicked up a massive fuss in the world media and put a on a show for the home crowd. Yet in February Russia sank a Chinese fishing trawler and the Chinese response was muted. Similarly, there’ve been several clashes in the South China Sea recently which have received no publicity from Beijing. The leadership in Beijing appears to be engaged in two activities: stoking the home front nationalism, and seeing how the US would react when Tokyo was threatened. Japan makes a nifty victim — imagine if the Chinese had tried this stunt with the Russians. Of course, the Tokyo-Washington alliance is the pillar of US hegemony in East Asia. Beijing is likely to continue to test it….
Petty [expletive] from Beijing abounded — note the class with which Tokyo handled the affair. No bluster, no random arrests of Chinese nationals in China. China arrested four Japanese nationals investigating possible bilking of the government of Japan in a WWII weapons clean-up in China. It was symptomatic that China apparently barred accredited Japanese reporters from the interviews of the fishing boat captain.
SNIP
The cut off of rare earths to Japan was handled, this fantastic blog post on the Senkakus mess [discussing ownership of the islands] from Ampontan says that the cut off did not occur as an administrative order, but as an order not to load them onto ships for transport to Japan. Which is not covered by international trade regulations. This is the same pattern we have seen in other Chinese behavior — remember the complaints from Thai fruit producers that Chinese shippers left their stuff to rot on Chinese docks rather than ship it inland to compete with Chinese fruit? China also suspended ministerial level exchanges.
Of the calculated humiliations and toddler-spite directed at Tokyo, my favorite was Beijing’s demand that Japan apologize for detaining the captain of a fishing boat who rammed Japanese vessels in Japanese waters. Disgusting. And again, look at the class with which the incident was handled in Tokyo.
