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【转载】为什么中国的南海行动符合常理?(中英文)
2016-05-05 00:43
 

  【编者按】

        本文系美国《国家利益》(The National Interests)杂志于2015年12月16日发表,发表后即获国内主要网络媒体(环球网、光明日报网等)及新媒体平台关注与评述,2015年12月30日,中央电视台国际频道专门对文章观点进行了说明。

        作者Greg Austin(格雷格·奥斯汀),纽约东西方研究所研究员,澳大利亚新南威尔士大学防务力量学院访问学者。

        海立云垂现转发全文并附网络媒体译文,供参考。

  

  Why Beijing’s South China Sea Moves Make Sense Now

  

  China’s military activities on its oceanfrontier have given rise to a fear that it’s seeking to expand its power at the expense of others now that it has a more powerful navy. The essence of this idea is that China’s activities are expansionist and more aggressive compared with twenty or thirty years ago because it has a new urge for more territory or because it wants to throw its new-found weight around in maritime areas to rewrite regional order.

  

  Another interpretation is possible, more inconformity with the facts, and less sinister.

  

  China’s ocean frontier has, for the mostpart, never been settled in the five centuries since the idea of maritime borders under international law was first articulated in 1609. China’s primary motivation in recent South China Sea military activities, then, is to defend what it sees as its island territories which neighboring countries have attempted to usurp.

  

  Regional order (the balance of economic andmilitary power between Japan and China and between the mainland and Taiwan) has already been rewritten by China’s peaceful rise and any additional gains accruing from the control of its claimed small island territories in the South China Sea would be marginal. For China, the main game on its maritime frontieris successful unification with Taiwan, which sits at the northern end of the South China Sea. Though China has come to describe the dispute in the Spratly Islands as a “core interest” because it involves sovereign territory, that is hardly new and is only a statement of the obvious. The more important characterization driving Chinese policy for decades has remained, as one Chinese government adviser observed in 1996, that the Spratly dispute is “smallin scale and local in nature.”

  

  Beginning in the mid-1800s, colonial powerssuch as the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Russia and Japan successively became involved in carving out spheresof influence or de facto sovereignty (“concessions” of some kind) over enclaves of Chinese land territory in such a way that the country, weak in naval power, didn’t place any priority on asserting or protecting a maritime frontier.

  

  It wasn’t until an 1887 treaty with France delimiting a sea border with the French protectorate of Tonkin that China began to take any action to demarcate and defend an ocean frontier. That came just two years after China had been forced by Japan to cede the island of Taiwan and associated small islands to Japanese sovereignty. And it was only with the defeat of Japan in 1945 that China again was in a position to demarcate and defend its maritime frontier, including around Taiwan, free from foreign military threat, invasion or occupation.

  

  The opportunity was short-lived because the country again fell into civil war, which resulted in an enduring stalemate about the country’s ocean frontier. In 1949, the Communist victory was incomplete. The rival government, the Republic of China (ROC) was able to establish itself on Taiwan and the mainland government was forced into a protracted and still unfinished series of island wars and political contests to mark out a maritime frontier.

  

  Beginning with Canada in 1970, major Western powers still recognizing the ROC began to shift their diplomatic recognition from it to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This has the inevitable effect under international law of preserving to a unitary China (led by the only recognized government) all territorial rights of the ROC prior to1949. Of special significance, these include the ROC claim to the Spratly Islands, manifested in 1946 through physical occupation of the island of Taiping (Itu Aba). The ROC and the PRC maintain nearly identical territorial claims in the South China Sea.

  

  China’s current claims on its ocean frontier comprise three main elements: claim to territorial sovereignty over Taiwan and other ROC-controlled islands, claim to territorial sovereignty overa large number of other small islands in the South China Sea (Paracel andSpratly islands) or East China Sea (Senkaku Islands), and claims to maritime resource jurisdictions (not sovereignty) that might flow to China if its claims to the land territories were recognized by adjacent states.

  

  With the exception of the claim to the Senkaku Islands, the territorial claims of China haven’t changed since before 1949. It was the ROC that in 1970 first claimed the Senkaku Islands and the PRC was forced to follow suit since both governments were at that time competing to be seen as defending the sovereignty of “one China."

  

  The extent and character of China’s sovereignty claims aren’t unusual and in broad terms conform to the practice of other states with only one clear set of exceptions: China appears to claim sovereignty over submerged reefs that wouldn’t normally qualify as land territory.

  

  It’s regularly asserted by some scholars, media commentators and other analysts that China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea. But that is based on a misunderstanding of theso-called nine-dashed line that China has repeatedly included in maps of the South China since 1947. In December 2014, in a study of China’s potential ocean frontier in the South China Sea, the U.S. Department of State observed correctly that China has never clarified the jurisdictional intent of the U-shaped line.

  

  Thus, the current maritime territorial disputes predate the rise of China’s power and increase in its naval capability. Any assumption that China has somehow expanded its maritime claims because it now feels more powerful is not borne out by the facts. One of many things that have changed about the disputes is China’s willingness to actrobustly, as most states would, to defend pre-existing sovereignty claims that have been in place for at least 66 years.

  


  

  为什么中国的南海行动符合常理?

  

  有观点认为,凭借更为强大的海军力量,中国在其海疆试图削弱他国、拓展实力的军事活动已经引发了相当的恐惧。这一看法本质上强调——无论是出于提出更多领土诉求的新态势,还是出于投送新兴海上力量以重塑区域秩序的强烈愿望,中国当下的行动使其比二三十年前更像侵略者,更有攻击性。

  然而我认为另外一种解释因更加符合事实、更少阴谋论色彩而更能站得住脚。

  自1609年国际法意义上的领海概念得到明确以来的五个世纪里,大多数情况下中国的领海边界都没有得到确定,中国最近在南中国海进行军事行动的初始动机其实是为了保卫那些被视为其领土的岛屿免受邻国篡夺意图的侵害,而这并不是无理声索和军事扩张。

  我们要看到,现行区域秩序(经济和军事层面的中日均势和两岸均势)已被中国和平崛起的宏大事实所重构,相比之下其控制南海岛屿的任何收益增殖仅仅是一种边缘性因素。尽管中国基于领土主权学说开始将南沙群岛描述为“核心利益”,然而它只是一种显著的客观存在而不是什么新鲜说辞。对于中国来说,其茫茫海疆之上的主要目标无疑是成功实现大陆与台湾的统一,而后者却坐落于南海的北端。正如中国政府的一名智囊早在1996年就观察到的那样,南沙争端本身具有“小规模”和“局部性”的特征。作为几十年来驱动中国相关政策的更重要因素,这种质性定位一直持续下来。

  回顾过去,从19世纪中叶开始,不少殖民国家,如英国、美国、比利时、意大利、法国、德国、葡萄牙、俄罗斯和日本等都成功地划分了各自的势力范围,或以某种租借区的形式确立了在中国若干“飞地”的实质性主权。而当时海上力量孱弱的中国,并没有任何精力可优先用于勘定和维护海上边界。

  直到1887年中法谈判确定法国“保护国”越南同中国的领海边界,中国才开始采取措施定界戍边。然仅仅数年之后,日本便迫使中国割让台湾及其附属岛屿,直到1945年日本战败,中国才又有机会和地位捍卫自己的海上边境,使台湾等领土重回祖国怀抱,从而摆脱外国的军事威胁、入侵和控制。

  但这种机会并未持久,刚摆脱二战阴影又陷入冷战泥潭导致中国定鼎海疆的宏愿遭遇持续困境。由于1949年中国的共产主义运动并未完全取得胜利,中华民国(ROC)作为中共对立政权偏安于台湾一隅,而大陆的共产党政府则卷入了旷日持久、远未结束的各类岛礁冲突和政治斗争之中,以至于无法确定一条明确的领海边界。

  直到1970年加拿大承认中华人民共和国,西方国家对“中华民国”的外交承认才开始逐渐转移到了中华人民共和国(PRC)。在承认“一个中国”原则(由单一合法政府代表中国)的国际法框架下,这不可避免地涉及到对1949年以前“中华民国”的一切领土权利主张的继承。就此特殊意义而言,这些权利当然包括民国政府对南沙群岛的主权要求,而这一主张又通过1946年(民国舰队)实质占领太平岛的历史得到了确证。由此,当前的中华人民共和国政府与民国政府在涉及南海问题的主张上保持高度一致自是顺理成章。

  当前中国关于海洋边界的主张主要包括三方面内容:对台湾以及“中华民国”政府辖下其他岛屿的主权诉求、对南海水域(包括西沙、南沙群岛)和东海水域(包括钓鱼岛)大量小岛的主权诉求,以及要求南海声索国承认中国在(断续线)海域内的资源管辖权利。

  这里面除了关于钓鱼岛的声明以外,1949年以来中国政府关于的领土主张自始就没有发生过变化。只因1970年台湾当局首先提出钓鱼岛主权,大陆政府才出于同对岸争夺“一中”正统继而被迫宣称对钓鱼岛拥有主权。其实就程度和特点而言,中国的主权要求并无出奇之处,在对一般条款的处理上也与其他国家的举措类似,仅有一系列明确的免责条款或可视为例外:即中国似乎对一般并不视为岛屿领土的水下暗礁也宣称主权。

  一些学者、媒体评论员和其他分析家经常声称,中国对整个南海都提出了主权要求。

  这种观点其实源自对1947年以来中国一再标注于南海地图上的所谓“九段线”的误读。2014年12月份,在一项关于“中国在南海的潜在边界线”的课题研究中,美国国务院得出确切结论,即中国从来没有明确过对这种“U型线”的管辖意图。

  综上所述,鉴于当前南海纠纷在中国实力崛起及其海军扩张之前即已存在,任何“中国自恃实力大增而扩大海洋权利声索”的假设都不是经由事实推导得出的结论。与大多数国家相同的是,中国具有坚定的维权意愿,只不过这构成了使相关争论出现变化的众多因素之一。但这种先在性的主权诉求至少已经合理地存在了66年,中国人捍卫它无可指责。

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