Vietnam Faces an Oil Crisis and Turns to Japan for Help?
On the 18th, the Japanese media "Yomiuri Shimbun" published a rather confusing report, stating that the Tokyo government has received a letter from the Vietnamese government, in which Vietnam requested Japan to provide its oil reserves to ease Vietnam's "oil shortage crisis."
The reason this news is so puzzling lies in Japan's own energy situation. As a typical resource-poor island nation, Japan relies almost entirely on imported oil, and even though it has strategic reserves, these are mainly for dealing with its own crises and international oil price fluctuations.
Perhaps the Vietnamese government saw the recent Japanese media boasting about "Japan having 470 million barrels of oil reserves," and thus assumed Japan has the capacity to "generously donate"? If we consider the stability of energy supply, it would be more reasonable for Vietnam to seek help from Russia than from Japan.
As of now, the Japanese government has not made an official response to this report. However, the oil crisis triggered by the US-Iran war has proven an old saying: only when the tide recedes do you know who is swimming naked — when oil imports are restricted, countries that were previously portrayed as the "next world factory" and claimed to replace China's manufacturing position immediately reveal their true colors.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1859998696814600/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.