日本种岛的战略意图 Japan grows an island to check China's territorial ambitions

China’s artificial islands are fuelling a new struggle for control of Asia’s oceans, but while the regional superpower dredges military bases out of the ocean, Japan is growing an island in a bathtub.

中国的人工岛正引燃一场争夺亚洲海洋控制权的新斗争。然而，在这个地区超级大国在海上吹填出军事基地的同时，日本正在水槽中“种植”一个岛。

The island is called Okinotorishima, or “distant bird island”; a remote, storm-wracked coral atoll in the Philippine Sea, where two small outcrops protrude at high tide. Japan regards the atoll as its southernmost point; China says it is no island, merely a rock.

日本称这个岛为“冲之鸟岛”（Okinotorishima，意为遥远的鸟岛，中国称为“冲之鸟礁”——译者注），位于菲律宾海(Philippine Sea)，是一个遥远的、风暴肆虐的珊瑚环礁，在涨潮后只有两块岩石露出水面。日本将这个环礁视为日本的最南端；中国则称它并不是岛，只是礁石。

For millennia, as the land beneath it sunk, layers of coral grew on top and kept the atoll’s head above water. But now Okinotorishima is dying. Climate change is raising the sea level and killing the coral. Typhoons bite at what remains.

几千年来，随着环礁下方的土地下沉，层层珊瑚在顶上生长，使环礁的顶端一直保持在水面之上。但现在冲之鸟正在走向死亡。气候变化正在抬高海平面，并杀死珊瑚。台风则侵蚀着剩下的部分。

Japan is therefore on a desperate quest to regrow the reef. The results will decide the fate of a strategic redoubt, with legal repercussions in the South China Sea, and could offer hope to other atolls threatened by climate change.

因此，日本竭力寻求让珊瑚礁重新生长。其结果将决定一个战略性据点的命运，给南中国海(South China Sea)带来法律上的影响，还可能会给其他受气候变化威胁的环礁带来希望。

The bathtub, full of baby coral growing on iron plates, sits in a greenhouse at the Deep Seawater Research Institute on the island of Kumejima. Workers explain how they brought coral from Okinotorishima and harvested eggs. They will grow the baby corals in this laboratory for a year then transplant them back to the atoll.

上文所提的水槽位于久米岛(Kumejima)上的冲绳县海洋深层水研究所(Deep Seawater Research Institute)的一间温室里，水槽中全都是在铁片上生长的珊瑚幼虫。工作人员解释了他们如何从冲之鸟带回珊瑚并收集珊瑚虫卵。他们将在这间实验室里培育珊瑚幼虫一年，然后将它们移植回该环礁上。

For the scientists working on the project it is a battle with the ocean. They have successfully cultivated coral from the reef and transplanted it back to the island, but it is not enough. “The next technology … is keeping up with the rising sea by coral growth and accumulation of coral gravels and sand,” says Hajime Kayanne, a professor at the University of Tokyo.

对于参与该项目的科学家而言，这是一场与大海的战斗。他们已经成功从珊瑚礁上培育珊瑚并移植回该岛礁上，但这还不够。“下一项技术……是使珊瑚的生长以及珊瑚骨和砂砾的累积赶上海平面的上升，”东京大学(University of Tokyo)教授茅根创(Hajime Kayanne)表示。

“Our experiments with planting coral on Okinotorishima are ongoing,” says Makoto Omori, emeritus professor at the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. “We’ve made progress in expanding the area of coral planted, but the death rate of the transplanted coral is high, so we can’t yet say the amount of coral on the island is increasing.”

“我们在冲之鸟上种植珊瑚的实验正在进行当中，”东京海洋大学(Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology)名誉教授大森信(Makoto Omori)表示，“我们在扩展珊瑚种植面积方面取得了进展，但移植的珊瑚死亡率很高，因此我们还不能说岛上的珊瑚数量正在增加。”

No amount of transplantation can revive a reef by itself, says Mr Omori. Rather, the goal is for the transplants to spread across the atoll. Working in such a remote place is challenging because it is hard to monitor the coral.

大森表示，移植再多也无法使珊瑚礁自行恢复生长。实际上，这项工作的目标是让移植的珊瑚分布在整个环礁上。在如此遥远的地方从事这样的工作具有挑战性，因为难以对珊瑚进行监测。

For the scientists, rescuing Okinotorishima means saving the world’s coral, and the many islands that exist because of it. In the past four decades, 40 per cent of the world’s reefs have died.

对这些科学家而言，拯救冲之鸟意味着拯救全世界的珊瑚，以及许多因珊瑚而存在的岛屿。过去40年，全世界有40%的珊瑚礁已经死亡。

“The ecotechnology established in Okinotorishima can be applied to all the small atoll islands in the Pacific and Indian Ocean,” says Mr Kayanne. “We have almost 500 atolls in the world, and some island countries such as the Marshalls, Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives are completely formed of atolls.”

“在冲之鸟开创的生态技术可以用于太平洋和印度洋上的所有小型环礁岛，”茅根表示，“世界上有近500个珊瑚环礁，马绍尔群岛，图瓦卢，基里巴斯和马尔代夫等岛国完全是由环礁形成的。”

Japan’s generous funding has baser motives, however — the tiny reef looms large in the minds of military planners. Strategists talk of the two island chains separating China from the Pacific: the first running through the main Japanese islands, to Okinawa and Taiwan; the second through Japan’s Ogasawara Islands to the Marianas and the US submarine base at Guam.

不过，日本慷慨的资金支持具有更根本的动机——在军事规划人员心中，这个弹丸大小的珊瑚礁意义重大。战略家提到了将中国与太平洋分隔开来的两个岛链：第一岛链穿过日本本土的主要岛屿，连至冲绳和台湾；第二岛链则穿过日本的小笠原群岛(Ogasawara Islands)，一直到马里亚纳群岛和美国在关岛的潜艇基地。

In a hypothetical future conflict between the US and China, their navies would collide in the ocean between the two chains — and Okinotorishima is the only speck of land in those waters.

在假想的美中未来冲突情景中，两国海军将在这两个岛链之间的海域发生冲突，而冲之鸟是该海域内仅有的一小块陆地。

Hideaki Kaneda, a retired vice-admiral now at the Okazaki Institute, points out three ways in which the location matters to Japan’s security. First, he says, it would be a crucial theatre “for the Chinese military to deny access to reinforcements coming from the east”.

目前在冈崎研究所(Okazaki Institute)任职的退役海军中将金田秀昭(Hideaki Kaneda)指出，从三个方面来说，冲之鸟的位置对日本安全十分重要。他说，首先，冲之鸟将是“中国军队拒止来自东面的增援部队”的关键战场。

Second, Okinotorishima sits on the route Chinese nuclear submarines would take out into the Pacific, towards patrolling positions against the US. Third, it lies close to the sea lanes on which raw materials flow to Japan from northern and western Australian ports.

其次，冲之鸟坐落在中国核潜艇进入太平洋前往防美巡逻岗位的航道上。第三，它的位置靠近原材料从澳大利亚北部和西部港口流入日本的海上通道。

That makes a 200-mile exclusive economic zone around Okinotorishima, and thus greater control of those waters, a strategic asset beyond even the natural resources that might lie beneath the surface.

因此，假如冲之鸟拥有200海里专属经济区、并由此获得对该水域的更大控制权，它将成为一项战略资产，其价值甚至比该区域海平面下可能蕴含的自然资源还要宝贵。

Only an island can generate an exclusive economic zone, however, not a rock — which is the other reason why Japan is trying to regrow the coral, rather than mirroring China by laying down a few thousand tonnes of sand and concrete.

不过，只有岛屿才拥有专属经济区，礁石则不能。这也是日本试图让珊瑚在冲之鸟恢复生长、而不是照搬中国的办法、在这里倾卸成千上万吨沙子和混凝土的另一个原因。

Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines an island as a “naturally formed area of land” which is “above water at high tide”. It excludes “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own”.

按照《联合国海洋法公约》(UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS)第121条的定义，岛屿是“在高潮时高于水面的自然形成的陆地区域”。这一定义排除了“不能维持人类居住或者本身的经济生活的礁石”。

China’s new islands in the South China Sea are artificial. If Japan revives the coral on Okinotorishima, however, it can argue the feature is “naturally formed”. At the same time, the very activity of farming coral is part of Japan’s effort to show the atoll has an economic life, and support its more dubious contention that Okinotorishima is not a “rock”.

中国在南中国海的新岛屿是人造的。然而，如果日本令冲之鸟的珊瑚得以恢复生长，它可以辩称这一地貌是“自然形成的”。与此同时，种植珊瑚的活动本身，也是日本想要证明该珊瑚礁有经济生活的努力的一部分，从而支持其不太站得住脚的冲之鸟不是“礁石”的论点。

“There is no clear definition of rocks in UNCLOS — this is the government of Japan’s stance,” says Mr Kaneda. “Historically, Japan has sustained the ‘economic life’ of the island.”

金田表示：“日本政府的立场是，《联合国海洋法公约》中没有对礁石的明确定义。从历史的角度来说，日本一直维持着该岛的‘经济生活’。”

By taking this position, Japan hopes to claim Okinotorishima as an island with its own EEZ, while still opposing China’s reclamation in the South China Sea. Some scholars argue it would be wiser to give up the claim — the better to assert China’s island-building is illegitimate — but the military value of Okinotorishima makes that unlikely.

通过采取这种立场，日本政府希望能在继续反对中国在南中国海填海造岛行为的同时，主张冲之鸟是一个拥有专属经济区的岛屿。部分学者辩称，更明智的做法是放弃这一主张（这么做更有利于声称中国的造岛行为非法），但冲之鸟的军事价值使得日本政府不太可能这么做。

Legal wrangles will not matter if the atoll erodes away, however. “We’ve had various problems and failures along the way, but next year we expect to plant three hectares of coral,” says Mr Omori. “A three hectare plantation will be a world first.”

不过，如果该环礁被一点点侵蚀殆尽，法律上的争执将变得毫无意义。“我们遭遇了各种各样的问题和失败，但明年我们预计会种植3公顷珊瑚。”大森表示，“3公顷的珊瑚种植将是世界上的首例。”