The actual score is
Rest of the world (advantage) versus China (disadvantage).
China is acting like some new money that’s drunk on their newly found wealth, hence not quite knowing how to behave with its neighbors. All this incident did was remind everyone in the world the true nature of the Chinese govt. Everyone will be on guard when it comes to China.
China acted too rashly and showed its cards too early, rather like Germany in WW2. Had Germany wanted a little longer and perfected its weapons a little longer before WW2 broke out, the Allies might have even lost or at least have a much tougher time beating Germany. Same thing, China just showed its cards too early.
China had been accused of hoarding rare earth it was mining in China only for Chinese firms, weeks before this happened. Now that they actually pulled this card against Japan, I think it only serves to tar China in the long term.
You say but China has most of the rare earth deposits? Simple fact is it’s not true. As earlier poster said, China mines most of it because mining it is messy and environmental damaging. US has about 15% of this stuff on US soil but doesn’t bother mining it because, well it’s dirty.
