I believe after the ultimatum for Japan to leave Indo-China was...

I believe after the ultimatum for Japan to leave Indo-China was ignored, the Americans, British Empire and Dutch in response brought in an embargo of the following exports, to Japan

- oil

- pig iron

- rubber

Effectively, all the resources a 20th century industrial society needed.

China is building nuclear power stations to reduce pollution, as most of it's historical social upheavals tend to occur from internal sources, see Taiping Rebellion, et cetera.  Pollution is bad (see water, food and air) staying in power (communists) is good. So at the moment China is reducing or stopped the following

-- forest reduction in the water catchments, to improve water quality

-- recycling of Western societies rubbish, re: paper, plastic, metals. These are low value industries

-- small scale/ dirty processors of ores and extraction industries. They are cracking down on small coal/ iron ore mines, small scale steel works

- small scale refineries. The tailings and slag from zinc/copper processing (cadmium is quite nasty) go straight into the water courses and straight on the crops

It's not so much a fear of Western embargo's, as a fear of 100 million people angry at Melamine in their milk and heavy metals in their food and not being able to see the sun.