Well, that's right too.
But I'd rather say they harass the military insurgents, although they won't for fear of quick escalation.

So now you have Chinese military ships harassing Japanese fishers in Japanese waters and then Japanese military harassing possibly illegal Chinese fishermen, which China will then try to use for publicity.

You need to realise that China is not every Chinese person.
Their govt. harasses their own people too.

If they are spraying our fishing boats with water cannons and we go spray their fishing boats with water cannons, we just fall into playing their game and doing what they want.

Our govts. need to capture the ones that are spraying the fishing boats, instead of capturing fishing boats.

By "little guy", I mean the grunt workers, which in this case, are the fishing boats in both the countries. No govt. is a "little guy" in my books. Definitely not one that can afford a Police and a military.