韦氏观察

Why China and Ugly Japan are oceans apart
YouTube上看似不应受追捧的热门视频，是一段有关一艘小渔船的40分钟短片。逾150万人（主要在日本和中国）观看了发生在海上的这一幕，仅略少于登录该网站观看另一段40秒视频的人数——后者观看的是一只名叫泰森(Tyson)的小狗踩着日本人玩滑板的视频。
The unlikely YouTube hit of the moment is a 40-minute video about a little fishing boat. More than 1.5m people, mainly in Japan and China, have watched this ocean drama, only a tad fewer than those who logged on to a 40-second clip about Tyson the skateboarding dog-Japanese.

短片中的这艘中国拖网渔船，是9月一起事件的焦点——该事件使得中日关系降至2005年以来的冰点。上周泄露的这段短片，意在展现一艘中国渔船在钓鱼岛周边水域撞击日本海上保安厅舰艇的画面。钓鱼岛在日本被称为尖阁列岛(Senkaku )，这些岛屿无人居住，但中日两国争夺激烈。这一段视频的泄露，再度点燃了围绕日本拘捕中方船长时间的争议——此次事件引发了中日外交角力。由于中国政府施加了强大的政治压力，日本检察机关以担心中日关系为由释放了中国船长，没有对其提出起诉。
The featured Chinese trawler is at the centre of a September incident that brought Sino-Japanese relations to their lowest point since 2005. The footage, leaked last week, purports to show a Chinese boat ramming a Japanese coastguard ship in waters close to uninhabited, but fiercely contested, islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. Its release has reignited controversy over Japan’s arrest of the captain, which set off a diplomatic shoving-match between Beijing and Tokyo. So intense was the political pressure from Beijing that Japanese prosecutors released the captain without pressing charges, citing concerns about Sino-Japanese ties.

该视频的泄露，似乎是为了支持日本的说法：即该国别无选择，只能在本国控制的岛屿附近，拘捕故意冲撞日本舰艇的中国渔船船长。中国政府始终否认这艘渔船主动挑衅，尽管许多中国网民正是因此而把船长奉为英雄。
Tokyo’s apparent climbdown in releasing the captain provoked a backlash at home. Even Yoichi Funabashi, editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s most liberal mainstream newspaper, published an anguished letter in which he decried Beijing’s actions. “If China continues to act as it has, we Japanese will be prepared to engage in a long, long struggle with China.”

日本政府释放船长，显然是一种退让，这在日本国内引发了强烈反响。甚至日本最开明的主流报纸《朝日新闻》(Asahi Shimbun)的主编船桥洋一(Yoichi Funabashi)，也悲愤地发表了一封信件，谴责中国政府的举动。“如果中国继续这么做，我们日本人将准备与中国进行长期斗争”。

通常温文尔雅、会讲汉语的船桥洋一强烈抨击中国政府采取的报复性措施，包括中方否认的对日出口稀土禁令。他预言，事实将证明，对日本而言，“尖阁列岛冲击”(Senkaku shock)要比1971年的“尼克松冲击”(Nixon shock)强烈得多——当时，美国总统尼克松在日本政府不知情的情况下，与中国恢复了正常邦交。

这些小岛的归属权究竟为何引起如此大的争议？的确，这里涉及到一些存亡攸关的重大战略问题。东中国海附近海域盛产鱼类，石油和天然气储藏可能也非常丰富。它们还毗邻重要的航道。但是，要想真正弄清楚这起争端的本质，人们需要回头看看历史——这种情况在亚洲非常普遍。

中国政府宣称，这些岛屿自明朝（1368年-1644年）以来，就是中国的一部分——当时的国际地图证明了这一点。在中国政府看来，钓鱼岛是台湾的一部分——中国在1894-1895年的甲午战争中战败后，台湾沦为日本的殖民地。因此，当日本在战后放弃台湾时，也应该就放弃了这些岛屿。

而日本的说法则完全不同，这并不令人感到意外。日本表示，它在1885年勘察了尖阁列岛（钓鱼岛），证实它们“无人居住，且没有曾处于中国控制之下的任何迹象”。日本表示，这些岛屿不是台湾的一部分，而是冲绳岛的延伸，因此在1971年回归日本无可厚非。

对于哪一方的法律主张更有力，我不发表意见。但我怀疑这涉及一些更深层次的问题。在西方人将枪炮和鸦片带到东亚地区之前，国家政府的观念尚未完全确立。韩国首尔国际关系专家Min Gyo Koo表示：“当时，人们实际上还没有主权观念，而只是宗主观念。”他表示，不言而喻，中国当时是占据主导地位的文明国家，因此，它获得了周边王国的朝贡，比如琉球国(Ryukyu)——后来被日本兼并后，成为了冲绳群岛。

研究中国的历史学家乔纳森•芬比(Jonathan Fenby)这样描述中华帝国与尖阁列岛/钓鱼岛之间可能存在的关系：“在现实中对一个岩石丛生的岛屿行使主权，这样的事情并不重要。只要人们人们承认中国体制的固有的优越性，就足够了。”

关键在于，最全面地吸收了欧洲的主权和政府观念的国家是日本。在1868年明治维新时期，日本推翻了半封建的幕府，建立了议会体制。它同时接纳了西方的观点：要成为一个伟大的国家，就必须获得控制权。这促使日本开始了地区扩张主义的悲剧性运动。

中日两国政府从不同角度看待尖阁列岛/钓鱼岛问题。中国将自身对钓鱼岛的领土主张，视为一个更广泛使命的组成部分：让东亚地区恢复到西方（及其日本“继子”）搅局之前的状态，从而纠正历史性错误。对中国政府而言，此次纠纷（以及南中国海的其它类似纠纷）不过是洗刷150年屈辱历史行动的一部分。相反，日本政府把中国的日益自信，视为对其自二战结束以来建立的法律和行政标准的挑战。在日本看来，这是个法律问题；而对中国来说，它事关尊严。目前尚不清楚怎样调和这两种观点。
The normally mild-mannered Mr Funabashi, a Chinese speaker, complained bitterly about retaliatory measures by Beijing, including a non-acknowledged ban on the export of rare earths. The “Senkaku shock”, he predicted, would prove to be a much bigger blow to Japan than the “Nixon shock” of 1971 when the US president normalised relations with Beijing behind Tokyo’s back.

Why on earth is ownership of these tiny rocks so explosive an issue? Certainly, there are important strategic matters at stake. Nearby waters in the East China Sea are teeming with fish and potentially rich in oil and gas. They are also near important shipping lanes. But really to get at the heart of the dispute, as so often in Asia, one needs to peel back layers of history.

Beijing claims the islands have been part of China since the Ming Dynasty era (1368-1644), when, it says, international maps confirmed its ownership. From Beijing’s perspective they are part of Taiwan, which Japan colonised after defeating China in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95. As such, they should have been relinquished when Japan gave up Taiwan after the war.

Not surprisingly, Japan’s account is entirely different. It says it surveyed the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in 1885, confirming they had “been uninhabited and showed no trace of having been under the control of China”. They were not part of Taiwan, it says, but were run from Okinawa and thus rightly returned to Japan in 1971.

I offer no opinion as to whose legal claim is stronger. But I suspect that something deeper is at stake. Before westerners brought their guns and opium to east Asia, the idea of a nation state was not well established. “Back then, people didn’t really have the concept of sovereignty, rather there was suzerainty,” says Min Gyo Koo, an expert in international affairs in Seoul. China was self-evidently the dominant civilisation, he says. As such, it collected tribute from surrounding kingdoms, such as Ryukyu, which later became known as Okinawa when it was annexed by Japan.

Jonathan Fenby, a historian of China, puts imperial China’s likely relationship with the Senkaku/ Diaoyu islands thus: “Things like exercising practical sovereignty over a rocky island didn’t matter.

So long as people recognised the innate superiority of the Chinese system, that was enough.”

Crucially, the country that most thoroughly absorbed European concepts of sovereignty and the nation state was Japan. In the Meiji Restoration of 1868, it overhauled its semi-feudal shogunate, replacing it with a parliamentary system. It also took on board the western notions that, to be a great nation, it must acquire an empire. That set it off on its tragic campaign of regional expansionism.

Beijing and Tokyo peer at the Senkaku/Diaoyu through a different lens. China views its claim as part of a broader mission to right historical wrongs by returning the region to the way it was before the west – and its Japanese stepchild – messed things up. For Beijing, the dispute, and others like it in the South China Sea, is nothing less than part of a campaign to overturn 150 years of humiliation. Tokyo, by contrast, regards China’s growing assertiveness as a challenge to the legal and administrative norms that have held since the war. For Japan it is a matter of law, for China, one of respect. It is not obvious how these two views can be reconciled.

作者：英国《金融时报》专栏作家 戴维•皮林 , 译者/何黎

读者boss6tg 来自北京市评论：
日本炸了美国的珍珠港，美国给了日本两颗原子弹，美国和日本之间的账目早就算清楚了，也算公平。但是中国和日本的战争，中国吃亏吃的太多了，受的灾难太深重了，这笔账不是那么容易算清楚的。也许中国目前还没有能力跟日本算账，但是这并不表示这笔账目已经勾销。我是和平主义者，但是日本除外，我希望在有生之年看到日本遭到报应！

匿名读者评论：
哈哈，我想起来了，作者很对，那个视频确实不错，一条美国狗，骑着一个日本人边玩滑板，边看奥巴马作“获诺贝尔和平奖”宣言。这段关于狗的视频，和美国政治家的宣言一直在YOUTUBE排名中各领风骚，好看的很。