2026-05-06
26 分钟Through an overload of information to get to the heart of the story, this is The Point.
From May the 1st to May the 5th, the Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takeuchi embarked on a tour of Vietnam and Australia.
In the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, she rebranded Japan's free and open Indo-Pacific policy,
first wrote out by Shinzo Abe a decade ago as a vision of freedom and openness,
but read between the lines and the message is.
Clear.
China is the problem, Japan is the solution and everyone else is expected to agree.
In Canberra, the language grew even more theatrical.
Economic coercion, market disruptions, shared ambition for a peaceful,
stable and prosperous region, big words, intentionally vague.
Convenient, too, when you need a fabricated thread to advance your own selfish agenda.
Some might call it strategic ambiguity.
Others would call it blaming others for reactions to your own moves.
Then came the optics.
In Canberra, Takechi knelt at the tomb of the unknown soldier commemorating fallen Australian soldiers
over the past century, including 39,000 who fought against Imperial Japan.
Respectful?
Perhaps selective, definitely.
Because across much of Asia, where Japan left much deeper scars,
such as in China, where over 35 million people were killed or wounded at the hands of Japanese imperial aggressors,