Foreign Affairs has a piece by me on its website arguing that China has been delinking an increasingly softer stance on economic ties with Japan, even as political ties between the two countries between increasingly brittle. The URL below will lead you to the first few paragraphs and logging in will bring you the rest. For those who do not subscribe, you can register for free to get the whole piece.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140615/richard-k
atz/why-chinese-japanese-economic-relations-are-improvi
ng

The opening includes:

"When it comes to Japan, China seems torn. On security issues, it is becoming increasingly hawkish -- witness its recent declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands in the East China Sea. But on economic ties -- from Japanese imports to Japanese investments -- it is becoming increasingly dovish. In short, China has started to delink economics from politics..
A sign that China has given up on that gambit was seen in Chinese media reporting on the visit of a top-level Japanese business delegation to Beijing in November. China's state-owned TV network, CCTV, reported, "Putting aside their countries' diplomatic deadlock, the two sides are seeking better economic ties." To be sure, the normalization of economic ties could be interrupted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's widely criticized December 26 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which is controversial because it honors, among others, 14 Class-A World War II-era war criminals. But otherwise, Chinese-Japanese economic relations (but not political ties) are set to get better, not worse.
The delinking limits the ways that Beijing can pressure Tokyo -- or induce Japanese business to pressure Abe. In turn, it forces China to rely on policies, such as the ADIZ, that could alienate other Asian neighbors."

So far (as of Dec. 30) there has been no sign of mass boycotts of Japanese products, or even mass rallies, let alone a repeat of the violence of 2012. The Communist Party-affiliated. On December 27, the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times ran an editorial calling for countermeasures but limited those to barring Japanese politicians who have visited Yasukuni from coming to China for five years. The next day it ran an editorial arguing against mass boycotts or even mass demonstrations.

Richard Katz