Women in China The sky’s the limit

Women in China
中国女性

The sky's the limit
天空无限宽广

But it's not exactly heaven
却不尽然是天堂

Nov 26th 2011 | from the print edition



PULLY CHAU SPENT eight years working for the Chinese office of a big international advertising agency and never got a pay rise; there was always some excuse. "It was stupid of me not to ask," she says. "If I had been a Caucasian man, I would have done better." She stuck around because she liked the idea of working for an outfit that was well known in China and hoped to learn something. Eventually she got fed up and took a job with another Western agency, draftfcb, where she is now chairman and CEO for Greater China, based in Shanghai. Just turned 50, glamorous, confident and boundlessly energetic, she could pick and choose from any number of jobs. There are lots of opportunities for women in China, she says―but in business life is still easier for men.

Pully Chau在一家大型国际广告公司的中国办事处工作了八年，但从未有过加薪，总是有这样那样的借口阻挡她的加薪之路。"我不会傻到不提出疑问，"她说，"倘若我是个白人男性，我应该会做得更好。"Pully迟迟不肯跳槽的原因是她喜欢为这样一家中国知名度很高的公司工作，并且希望学到一些东西。但长此以往，她受够了这样的境遇，最终跳槽到另一家西方广告公司DraftFCB。现在，她成为这家公司大中华区的主席和首席执行官，总部设在上海。Pully刚过五十岁，她富有魅力，充满自信，活力四射，对现在的她来说，对任何一种工作都可以随意挑选，手到擒来。她说，在中国，女性拥有很多的机会，但商业之路走得更顺的，依旧还是男性。

Women make up 49% of China's population and 46% of its labour force, a higher proportion than in many Western countries. In large part that is because Mao Zedong, who famously said that "women hold up half the sky", saw them as a resource and launched a campaign to get them to work outside the home. China is generally reckoned to be more open to women than other East Asian countries, with Taiwan somewhat behind, South Korea further back and Japan the worst. And its women expect to be taken seriously; as one Chinese female investment banker in Beijing puts it, "we do not come across as deferential".

中国总人口中49%为女性，其中女性劳动力占总劳动力的46%，这个比例比人很多西方国家都高。这很大程度上要归功于毛泽东，他曾有一句名言："妇女能顶半边天。"他把女性看做一种资源，并发起了让女性在外工作的运动。渐渐地，相较其他东亚国家和地区，中国成为众人眼中对女性更加开放的国家，台湾紧随其后，韩国次之，而日本更次。中国的女性希望受到认真的对待，正如在北京的一位中国女投资银行家所言："中国女性不会给人留下低眉顺眼的印象。"

Young Chinese women have been moving away from the countryside in droves and piling into the electronics factories in the booming coastal belt, leading dreary lives but earning more money than their parents ever dreamed of. Others have been pouring into universities, at home and abroad, and graduating in almost the same numbers as men. And once they have negotiated China's highly competitive education system, they want to get on a career ladder and start climbing. The opportunities are there. Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, who runs a consultancy, 20-first, that helps companies improve the balance between the sexes in senior jobs, points out that China already has a higher proportion of women in the top layers of management than many Western countries.

大批的年轻中国女性从乡村涌进欣欣向荣的沿海地带，她们在电子工厂中工作，生活枯燥，但所赚的钱却远超出她们父母的梦之所及。还有一些进入了国内外高等学府深造，毕业生男女比例几乎旗鼓相当。一旦通过了中国教育系统竞争激烈的独木桥，她们便希望能找到工作，向职业阶梯的上层攀爬。机遇就摆在那里。20-first是一家帮助平衡高层岗位性别比例的咨询公司，其所有者阿维娃・维滕贝格-考克斯指出，中国企业高管的女性比例已经超过了很多西方国家。

The supply of female talent is abundant, says Jin Yu, a partner with McKinsey in Beijing and their most senior woman in China, but once you start funnelling it the numbers come down. She also concedes that there is room for improvement in the way that Chinese companies nurture potential female leaders. The same goes for the Chinese body politic: only 13 of the 204 members elected at the most recent meeting of the Chinese Communist Party's central committee (its top decision-making body) were women.

北京的Jin Yu是麦肯锡咨询公司在中国最资深的女性合伙人，她说，女性人才供应很充足，但是一旦开始进行集中筛选，女性人数就会减少。她同时也承认，中国企业在培养女性领导人方面还有很大的进步空间。而中国政体方面也存在同样的问题：中国共产党中央委员会（中国的最高决策机关）最新选出的204名委员中，只有13名是女性。

Jobs with state-owned companies are popular with Chinese women because at lower levels these are relatively comfortable places to work, with shorter and more predictable hours than in the private sector. But attitudes remain highly conservative and very few women are found in the upper echelons. Wendy (not her real name), a well-qualified woman in her 40s with an MBA, holds down a senior job at China National Petroleum Corporation, the country's largest integrated oil and gas company, but complains that women suffer from discrimination both in her company and her industry. She has had to do a lot of travelling to places like Libya, Sudan and Pakistan and blames her recent divorce on the demands of the job. "You have to give up a lot" to maintain your position at work in a company like hers, she says. After her divorce she applied for a lower-level post with less punishing hours so she could spend more time with her 12-year-old daughter. But she is already studying for her next qualification and plans to go back on the fast track once her daughter is older so she can send her to study in Britain. "Chinese women have a very difficult life," she says.

国有企业的基层岗位与私营企业相比，工作时间较短也较为固定，这些相对舒适的工作岗位很受中国女性的青睐。但是，国有企业的观念仍旧高度保守，女性高层少之又少。Wendy(化名)是一名出类拔萃的女性，她拥有MBA学位，同时也在中国石油天然气集团公司（中国最大的综合油气企业）担任高层职务。但她还是抱怨道，在她所从事的领域和公司内部，女性仍旧受到歧视。她不得不经常到利比亚、苏丹、巴基斯坦这样的地方出差，同时她也把最近的婚姻破裂归咎于工作的影响。Wendy说，若想在这种公司保住自己的位子，"你必须放弃很多东西"。在离婚后，Wendy申请了超负荷工作时间较短的低层岗位，以便有更多的时间陪伴自己十二岁的女儿。但是，她已经开始为拿到下一个文凭而努力，并计划在女儿长大一点后把她送到英国上学，然后自己回到一线岗位工作。她说："中国女性的生活都很不容易。"

Many female high-fliers in China find it easier to work for a multinational. Iris Kang, who heads the business unit for emerging markets at Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company, used to be a doctor in a state-owned hospital but switched to the private sector after a visit to Nepal, where she developed a taste for the capitalist system. She says there is less sex discrimination in multinationals than in Chinese companies, and the number of women in senior posts in her firm is rising rapidly.

在中国，许多女性佼佼者都觉得为跨国公司工作更容易些。Iris Kang是瑞辉制药公司的新兴市场业务部门主管，她曾经是一家国有医院的医生，但到尼泊尔访问的经历让她开始对资本主义制度产生兴趣，之后便跳槽到私营企业。她说，与中国公司相比，跨国公司性别歧视情况相对不算严重，她所在的公司也有越来越多的女性担任高层职务。

Hers is another tale of relentless self-improvement. Soon after she joined the private sector she took an executive MBA at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, China's most highly rated business school, and last year she added a Masters degree in pharmaceutical medicine, all the while heading a team of 120 people in her job with Pfizer. As Ms Kang says, to succeed as a woman in China "you need to be better than a man."

Kang女士的故事是另一部坚韧不拔自我升华的传奇。进入私企后，在辉瑞的工作岗位上领导着120人团队的同时，她在中欧国际工商学院（中国最高等的商学院）取得了在职工商管理硕士学位，又于去年获得了制药学的硕士学位。正如她所说，中国女性若想成功，"你需要比男人更优秀。"

That goes for female entrepreneurs, too. China has plenty: over 29m of them at the latest count, or a quarter of the national total, according to Meng Xiaosi, vice-president of the All-China Women's Federation. And some strike it very rich: seven of the 14 women on last year's Forbes worldwide list of self-made billionaires were from China, with property magnates particularly prominent. China is growing so fast that there are plenty of opportunities for start-ups and less red tape than in more mature economies, and finance is less of a problem than in the West.It is hard to see how these formidable Chinese women can fit any children into their impossibly busy lives, but most of them do. They are entitled to (but don't always get) three months' paid maternity leave and mostly return to work afterwards. That is made a little easier by one big advantage they have over most working women in the West: hands-on grandparents. The older generation has traditionally played a large part in bringing up children in China, and still does. A baby is often farmed out to the grandparents for the first few years of its life, or the grandparents come to live in the family home to look after it. If no grandparents are available, nannies are plentiful and affordable.

这对女性企业家来说亦然。中国有相当多的女企业家，据全国妇联副主席孟晓驷的说法，最新统计显示中国有2900万女企业家，占全国企业家总人数的四分之一。其中有些女企业家非常富有：在去年福布斯杂志的国际亿万富豪榜里，榜上有名的14位女性之中有7位来自中国，其中以房产女巨头尤为突出。中国的快速发展为新起步的企业创造了更多的机会，也免去了在许多更成熟经济体中存在的繁文缛节，同时减弱了财政问题对中国企业家的困扰，相较之下，西方企业家对财政问题更加头疼。。然而，看上去这些杰出的中国女性似乎很难在百忙之中抽出空闲来养育子女，但大部分人的确做到了这点。中国女性享有（但并非一定会得到）三个月的产假，大部分人都会在休假结束后返回工作岗位。但是，摩拳擦掌要照看孙辈的祖父母可以为中国的职业女性分忧，这是大部分西方职业女性所没有的一大优势。从中国传统角度来看，从古至今，老一辈人在抚养孙辈方面都扮演着很重要的角色。通常很小的孩子会交由祖父母看管，或者让祖父母住到子女家中来照看孙辈。如果不能得到祖父母的帮助，请保姆也是方便又划算的方法。

Most of these women seem to stop at one offspring, not only because of the one-child policy (which can be quite leaky) but because any more would be just too difficult to manage. Even looking after the one-and-only takes up a huge amount of time and resources. The whole business of child-rearing has become exhaustingly competitive.

似乎大部分女性只育有一个子女，这不仅是由于独生子女政策（因为钻这项政策的空子很简单），而是因为多子女家庭实在是太难经营了，单单养育独生子女就要耗费很多的时间和资源。养育孩子这件事已然成为一项需要耗尽心力来竞争的事业。


Precious in every way
集万千宠爱于一身的小皇帝们

Grooming the little emperors
让"小皇帝"们全副武装

It starts at kindergarten, which may be of the Monday-to-Friday boarding variety, and can get very expensive even at that level: the best ones are vastly oversubscribed, and although they are state-run, you hear stories about parents being asked for "sponsorship" of up to 200,000 yuan ($32,000) to get in. After that the child has to be manoeuvred into the best school, homework needs to be closely supervised and there is a lot of ferrying around for after-school activities. Steering a child through all this almost amounts to a full-time job. The effort culminates in the gaokao, the national college-entrance exam that determines which, if any, university the youngster can get into.

从幼儿园（也许是工作日寄宿制）开始，这一层级教育所需的费用已经非常昂贵了：最好的幼儿园已经被大量超额预订，就算是国家运营的幼儿园，要求家长缴纳最高达20万人民币"择校费"的现象也时有耳闻。即便经过运作进入最好的学校，也需要紧密监督孩子做作业的情况，并且接送孩子参加各种课外活动。带着孩子做以上这些事情几乎就已经是全职岗位的工作量了，而到了孩子高考（高等学校全国统一考试）的时候，也就是决定孩子能否升学以及进入哪所大学之时，家长更会使出全身解数，付出最大的努力。

What makes life even harder for Chinese women is that most Chinese men still expect them to look after home and family more or less single-handed, whether or not they are holding down a job. That includes caring for elderly parents or relatives, so it does not stop when the children grow up. These are deep-rooted, hard-to-shift attitudes that long pre-date the Mao era. Many Chinese men find it psychologically hard to cope with high-earning wives, and if something has to give it is usually the wife's job. Women who are too stridently successful may have trouble finding a husband in the first place. Even China's female high achievers are now beginning to wonder if they are doing the right thing. In their recent book "Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets", Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid note that "the concept of work-life balance, once foreign…is an increasingly popular topic of conversation."

然而，不管女性有没有工作，大部分的中国男人仍旧希望他们的妻子可以或多或少独自一人照顾家庭，这让中国女性的生活更加不易。承担家庭工作包括了照顾家中年老的父母，这并不会因子女长大成人而结束。这些根深蒂固的观念在毛泽东时代之前很久就存在了。许多中国男性在心理上很难接受高收入的妻子，如果需要做出让步，那么一般都是妻子放弃自己的工作。过于强势的成功女性往往从一开始就很难嫁出去。现在，甚至连出类拔萃的女性都开始有所疑惑，怀疑自己取得成就是否是正确之举。在《赢得新兴市场的人才之战》一书中， Sylvia Ann Hewlett和Ripa Rashid指出："平衡工作与生活这个理念曾经离我们很遥远，但现在越来越受到人们的关注。"

It has already become more acceptable for a woman not to be working, says Helene Zhuge, CEO of bon-tv, a private television network broadcasting from China to the world. If her husband has a good job, or she has money of her own, she can now be a stay-at-home wife without incurring social disapproval. According to Ms Zhuge, this is part of a broader movement over the past few years towards greater social liberalism in China. In the big cities it is now fine for a couple to live together without being married; divorce is getting more common; and being gay is no big deal. But having children out of wedlock is still unusual because the bureaucratic complications are horrendous.

向世界传播中国的私营电视台蓝海电视（Bon-TV）CEO诸葛虹云女士说，现在，不工作的女性反而更加容易受到认同。如果一位女性的丈夫有份好工作，或者她拥有自己的钱，那么她就可以做一名全职太太，外界也不会反对这样的做法。诸葛女士指出，这属于近年来中国向社会自由主义深化发展的广泛活动的一部分。在大城市中，人们现在可以接受未婚同居，离婚更加普遍，同性恋也不再是惊天大事。但是未婚生子仍旧非同寻常，这是因为需要走的后续程序实在是繁杂得可怕。

RUSSELL PEARLMAN

RUSSELL PEARLMAN

If Alan Creech drives a few miles from his downtown Milwaukee office, he can reach no fewer than seven Wal-Mart stores. Their brightly lit, boxy interiors, giant parking lots and upbeat motto, "Save money. Live better," all serve as an almost-inescapable reminder of one of the most vexing long-term investments the man has ever made.


Creech, who manages the $200 million Marshall Large-Cap Growth fund, bought Wal-Mart stock in 2004 and held on...and held on...and held on...as the retailing giant successfully navigated the long recession, increased its revenue by a staggering $150 billion and even doubled its earnings per share. And by the reckoning of nearly every Wall Street analyst who has covered the company over the past seven years, Creech's devotion was a smart move: As many as 13 pros had buy ratings on the stock in 2004, and a near-equal enthusiasm can be found among securities analysts in virtually every quarter since. (Only one of them, during this stretch, has slapped a SELL on the stock, according to Zacks Investment Research, and even then, the rating lasted a mere two months.) But for all that outspoken boosterism, Wal-Mart's shares, which were priced at about $50 when Creech first got in, never rose above $59, and these days, they're trading at $52 -- only 11 percent above the sticker price a full decade ago. "Every quarter, the company's earnings march up, and the stock goes nowhere," says Creech. "It's frustrating."

Michael Farr, a veteran money manager in Washington, D.C., uses the very same word to describe his experience with the stock of telecom-equipment maker Cisco Systems, which he has held for clients and which is down about 4 percent from its share price 10 years back. "It's been frustrating," says Farr, "particularly frustrating." Like Wal-Mart's, Cisco's earnings per share are up -- by more than 200 percent, in fact, from a decade ago. But such fundamentals haven't appeared to matter for the stock price, says Farr. Even the long bull-market rally that began in March 2009 didn't blow any lasting wind into the company's sails. Since the market's nadir that month, the much-followed Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has climbed more than 60 percent (even with the recent turbulence), and indexes following small and midsize stocks are up a bit more. But at some 16 bucks a share, Cisco is back to where it was at the broad market's bottom. (A Cisco spokesperson says the company is reducing costs and refocusing its businesses to recapture investor trust; representatives for Wal-Mart, meanwhile, say the company doesn't talk about its stock performance.)

Buyer's Remorse
There's no better investing insight than hindsight. That said, click below to see how big-name stocks in eight sectors have done in the past decade, compared with smaller rivals. Or, as many investors have put it, "Woulda, coulda, shoulda."


As it happens, Wall Streeters have an apt term -- one apart from frustration -- that captures what investors in these two venerable companies have been experiencing over the past several years: dead money. Stocks flatline for years, despite the occasional hope and sign of resurrection, and bury investor money in the process. And these days, what a lot of money it is. That's because the zombie bite has come not just to Cisco and Wal-Mart, but to a huge number of America's biggest and best-known companies. No fewer than 30 of the stocks in Standard & Poor's 100 index, for example, now have a share price that's lower than it was a decade ago. Another 11 stocks in the group have barely edged into positive territory, with annualized gains that haven't even kept up with inflation. Indeed, the current 10-year run for blue-chip stocks, according to researcher Ibbotson Associates, is the worst since 1968 to 1978.

Among the longtime laggards are the biggest-selling drug company in the world (Pfizer), the biggest chipmaker (Intel), the biggest industrial conglomerate (General Electric), the biggest software company (Microsoft) and the biggest biotech company (Amgen). Throw in a Big Three automaker (Ford), a media behemoth (Time Warner) and the top medical-device maker (Medtronic), and you get the picture: The losers are actually the leaders in a host of far-flung industries. They also just happen to be among the most widely held stocks in America. Retirement savers hold 'em, widows and orphans hold 'em and hundreds of large-cap mutual funds and ETFs hold 'em. Add up the market capitalizations of the 30 worst performers in this group, and the sheer scope of the dead-money pile becomes disappointingly clear: Individual and institutional investors are currently locking up more than $2 trillion in blue chips that have gone absolutely nowhere (or nowhere but down) for a decade.

Zombie Surprise
It's not surprising when stocks of poorly performing firms stink. But the profits of these companies did quite well -- and they still disappointed long-term investors.

Amgen (AMGN: 11,770.73, -134.86, -1.13%)
The biotech firm has quadrupled earnings in the past decade, but its share price suggests a lack of believers.

Cisco (CSCO: 2,587.99, -51.62, -1.96%)
In March 2000, it was the most valuable company in the world by market cap. How times have changed.

Dell (DELL: 1,216.13, -20.78, -1.68%)
No longer a low-cost PC leader? Tell that to founder Michael Dell: He's bought $250 million in stock over the past year.

Ford Motor (F: 10.17, -0.39, -3.69%)
The carmaker has rebounded of late -- but over the long haul, its share price hasn't.

Intel (INTC: 24.34, -0.60, -2.41%)
The ups of this chipmaker's stock have been matched by its downs.

Merck (MRK: 34.84, -0.25, -0.71%)
Shares have underperformed drugmakers as a whole. The sector is up 47% over the same period.

Pfizer (PFE: 19.47, -0.10, -0.51%)
It launched Viagra and Lipitor in the '90s but few blockbusters since. Shareholders bet the new CEO will help.

Time Warner (TWX: 33.32, -0.66, -1.94%)
Shares of the media giant are worth less than half of their value from 10 years ago.

Wal-Mart (WMT: 56.73, 0.05, 0.09%)
With 14 recent buy ratings and no sells, at least analysts are upbeat.

The truth is, such stocks don't have to shrink for their shareholders to lose money. There is, in fact, a huge opportunity cost attached to clinging to a long-languishing stock, because money tied up in zombies can't be put to work someplace else, says Bob Child, a financial adviser in Boca Raton, Fla., who manages about $80 million. Creech, whose Marshall fund has edged out the broad market in the past few years, has recited those "coulda, woulda, shouldas" with Wal-Mart dozens of times, he admits. If by some chance he had cashed in his Wal-Mart shares and bought rival discounter Costco in 2004 (up more than 100 percent since then), or perhaps that newfangled warehouser Amazon.com (up more than 300 percent), his fund shareholders would have done all the better.

But then Creech and other money managers concede something else as well: Even when they suspect a major stock holding is dead money, it can be awfully hard to head for the exits.

It wasn't that long ago -- the 1990s, actually -- when brokers and advisers actively encouraged investors to buy big-name stocks and then forget about it. The reasoning was simple: For decades, big-name stocks could do no wrong. From 1980 to 2000, the average annual return for the 100 biggest U.S. stocks was 62 percent. Sure, there were down years (1987 was mighty ugly), but someone who invested $10,000 in large stocks the year Ronald Reagan was elected president could have completely ignored stocks for 20 years and cashed out with nearly $125,000 the year George W. Bush was elected. That wasn't a fluke of the calendar, either. Indeed, during any 20-year period from 1970 to 2010, investors saw large-cap stocks' average annual return rise 13 percent. And as jaw-dropping as the returns were for a basket of big-name stocks, the returns for some individual names are all the more startling. Pfizer rose almost 4,000 percent from 1980 to 2000; Intel was up nearly 5,000 percent from 1986 to 2000.

As investors found out the hard way, however, buying and holding large U.S. stocks didn't work in the '00s. Anyone picking up large-cap stocks at the beginning of the decade was, more often than not, clobbered. As a group, the largest stocks lost, on average, 2 percent a year from 2001 to 2010. Some of the boldfaced winners of the 1980s and '90s -- Cisco, Pfizer, GE -- became the notorious losers of the decade that followed. Even when markets rallied, these stocks often only got back to their original values. Dividend payouts, which for many years had been a hallmark of large companies, dried up. Two asset bubbles, two recessions and a financial crisis certainly took their toll. By 2010 there were plenty of hedge fund traders, famed for their rapid buying and selling, who were happy to point out the failure of the old ways. Buying and holding "is just wrong -- the markets have evolved," says Simon Baker, who runs Baker Avenue Asset Management.

But the traditional sensibility of putting stocks in long-term storage isn't the only reason why so many managers have found themselves in the dead money -- and indeed, it may not even be the major one. Experts point out that many managers have no choice but to buy these stocks: There are only so many large-cap equities -- and a smaller number, obviously, in each sector or subsector. Take, for example, biotechnology. Many investors like buying biotechs, because once a drug hits it big, it can remain wildly profitable for years. However, in the mid-'00s, if a manager of a large-cap mutual fund wanted to own a large American biotech firm, he had but two options: Amgen and Gilead Sciences. There were then plenty of smaller but growing biotech stocks, such as Cephalon -- but adding smaller names carried another risk, managers say: having their fund no longer classified as a "large cap" fund by Morningstar, Lipper or another ratings firm. These classifications might not matter to individual investors, but they do to financial planners and pension plan administrators looking for a particular type of asset mix. For some big-time institutional investors, "if you are not in a certain-style box, they might fire you," says Charles Trzcinka, a finance professor at Indiana University.

Intellectual discipline often winds up keeping languishing stocks in the portfolio too. Managers -- particularly those who practice so-called value investing -- want to buy stocks that seem undervalued. It's one reason why many managers will salivate at a large, established company with growing profits but a shrinking stock price. If the stock keeps falling, they'll just buy more. Robert Zagunis has owned medical-technology firm Abbott Laboratories since 1992, when it was one of the original stocks in his now $4 billion Jensen Portfolio. Zagunis has bought and sold Abbott ever since, and it normally makes up at least 2 percent of his mutual fund's total assets. Since 2001, Abbott has more than doubled its annual profits, yet its stock price, while outpacing the broad market since then, has essentially remained flat. Rather than being disgusted, though, the Portland, Ore., manager actually likes that he can continually buy the stock. Investors would love to be able to buy a private company that was increasing profits like that, Zagunis says. But since Abbott is public, "you get a weekly, daily, even hourly reminder of what other people think," he says -- which makes the task of sticking to one's guns "more difficult." To be sure, while Zagunis's fund has averaged a 4.3 percent return over the past 10 years, it would have performed better with less Abbott stock. A spokesperson for Abbott says the stock has been "recognized as an attractive investment for its reliable dividend," which it has raised for 39 years straight.

Despite the pressure, Zagunis and others say they have no intention of abandoning the buy-and-hold strategy they've used for years. Investors get into trouble when they change their stripes or discipline, says Farr, who manages more than $700 million in client money for the firm Farr, Miller & Washington. "Every time I've seen someone I know do it, it's been the kiss of death," he says. Indeed, industry watchers say some fund managers might do well to take even larger positions in the dead-money stocks they truly believe in. That, as a matter of fact, is what Creech, of the Marshall fund, has been doing over the past year; he has cut the number of stocks he owns from about 70 to 50, and he has boosted his positions in several remaining large-company stocks -- including JPMorgan Chase, whose share price is down about 5 percent from a decade ago. "You have to be a double weight or not own a stock at all," he says.

Notably, however, he did finally throw in the towel this year on one of his longtime holdings: Wal-Mart. After seven years, the manager concluded that the retailer had become a "value trap" -- which is to say that while it looked like it could become a great stock, the odds weren't good that it ever would. "Wal-Mart hasn't moved out of a range in 10 years," Creech says. "When you think like that, it becomes very easy to unload."

 

Migration and business Weaving the world together

Migration and business

移民与贸易

Weaving the world together

连结世界

Mass migration in the internet age is changing the way that people do business

互联网时代的大规模移民正在改变人们经商的方式

Nov 19th 2011 | DELHI, ENUGU AND JAKARTA | from the print edition

IN THE flat world of maps, sharp lines show where one country ends and another begins. The real world is more fluid. Peoples do not have borders the way that parcels of land do. They seep from place to place; they wander; they migrate.

在地图上的扁平世界里，凌厉的线条展示了一个国家的起始和另一个国家的终止。但真实的世界是更加流动的。民族之间并不像一块块土地之间那样界限分明。他们四处渗透，游荡，迁徙。

Consider the difference between China and the Chinese people. One is an enormous country in Asia. The other is a nation that spans the planet. More Chinese people live outside mainland China than French people live in France, with some to be found in almost every country. Then there are some 22m ethnic Indians scattered across every continent (the third Indian base in Antarctica will open next year). Hundreds of smaller diasporas knit together far-flung lands: the Lebanese in west Africa and Latin America, the Japanese in Brazil and Peru, the smiling Mormons who knock on your door wherever you live.

想想中国和华人之间的区别。一个是幅员辽阔的亚洲国家，另一个是遍布全球的民族。住在中国大陆以外的华人比住在法国的法国人还要多，几乎在每个国家都能找到一些华人。接着，有大约2,200万印度人分布在几乎每一块大陆上（南极洲的第三个印度基地将于明年开幕）。成千上万的更小的移居群体将遥远的陆地连结起来：西非和拉美的黎巴嫩人，巴西和秘鲁的日本人，不管你住在哪儿都有可能会来敲门的微笑的摩门教徒。

Diasporas have been a part of the world for millennia. Today two changes are making them matter much more. First, they are far bigger than they were. The world has some 215m first-generation migrants, 40% more than in 1990. If migrants were a nation, they would be the world's fifth-largest, a bit more numerous than Brazilians, a little less so than Indonesians.

几千年以来移居群体一直是世界的一部分。现今有两个变化正在使他们变得更重要。第一，他们比以往更壮大了。全世界现在有大约2.15亿的第一代移民，比上世纪90年代多了40%。如果移民也是一个民族的话，他们会是世界第五大民族，比巴西人略多一些，比印度人略少一些。

Second, thanks to cheap flights and communications, people can now stay in touch with the places they came from. A century ago, a migrant might board a ship, sail to America and never see his friends or family again. Today, he texts his mother while still waiting to clear customs. He can wire her money in minutes. He can follow news from his hometown on his laptop. He can fly home regularly to visit relatives or invest his earnings in a new business.

第二，由于廉价的航班和通讯，人们现在可以同他们所来自的地方保持联系。一个世纪以前，一个移民登船航行至美洲，可能就再也见不到他的朋友和家人了。现在，他可以一边跟母亲发短信一边等候通过海关检查。他可以在几分钟之内把她的钱汇过去。他可以在笔记本电脑上关注来自家乡的新闻。他可以定期飞回家探望亲属或者把盈利投资到一个新的商业项目上去。

Such migrants do not merely benefit from all the new channels for communication that technology provides; they allow this technology to come into its own, fulfilling its potential to link the world together in a way that it never could if everyone stayed put behind the lines on maps. No other social networks offer the same global reach―or commercial opportunity.

这样的移民们不仅仅受益于技术提供的所有新的通讯渠道，他们也使这种技术逐渐得到重视，发挥其潜力把世界连结在一起，而且是以一种如果每个人都待在地图上的界线后面，这种连结就永远都不可能发生的方式。没有其他的社交网络提供同样的全球性覆盖―或者商业机会。

The immigrant song

移民之歌

This is because the diaspora networks have three lucrative virtues. First, they speed the flow of information across borders: a Chinese businessman in South Africa who sees a demand for plastic vuvuzelas will quickly inform his cousin who runs a factory in China.

这是因为移民网络有三个有利可图的优点。第一，他们加速了信息的跨国界流动：一个在南非的中国商人，看到当地对塑料呜呜祖拉（Vuvuzela，南非足球迷用于助威的大喇叭）有需求，则会马上通知他在中国经营工厂的表亲。

Second, they foster trust. That Chinese factory-owner will believe what his cousin tells him, and act on it fast, perhaps sealing a deal worth millions with a single conversation on Skype.

第二，它们能促进信任。那个中国工厂老板会相信他表亲告诉他的信息，并且迅速按他的话行动，可能在Skype（一个网络语音沟通工具）上简单交流后就敲定一笔几百万的交易。

Third, and most important, diasporas create connections that help people with good ideas collaborate with each other, both within and across ethnicities.

第三，也是最重要的一点，移民创造联系，帮助本民族内和跨种族的有好主意的人们相互合作。

In countries where the rule of law is uncertain―which includes most emerging markets―it is hard to do business with strangers. When courts cannot be trusted to enforce contracts, people prefer to deal with those they have confidence in. Personal ties make this easier.

在那些法治不稳定的国家―包括大多数新兴市场―同陌生人做生意是很困难的。当无法信任法院能执行合同的时候，人们更愿意跟他们信任的人打交道。私人关系使这一切变得更简单。

Chike Obidigbo, for example, runs a factory in Enugu, Nigeria, making soap and other household goods. He needs machines to churn palm oil and chemicals into soap, stamp it into bars and package it in plastic. He buys Chinese equipment, he says, because although it is not as good as European stuff, it is much cheaper. But it is difficult for a Nigerian firm to do business in China. Mr Obidigbo does not speak Chinese, and he cannot fly halfway around the world every time he wants to buy a new soap machine. Worse, if something goes wrong neither the Chinese government nor the Nigerian one is likely to be much help.

例如，Chike Obidigbo 在尼日利亚的埃努古经营一家工厂，生产肥皂和其它日用商品。他需要机器搅拌棕榈油和化工品放到肥皂里，做成条状，用塑料包装把它打包起来。他说，他购买中国的设备，因为尽管没有欧洲的设备好，但是便宜很多。而对于一家尼日利亚的公司来说在中国做生意真的很困难。Obidigbo先生不会讲中文，而且他也不能每次想买一台新肥皂机的时候就飞越大半个地球来中国。更糟糕的是，如果出什么差错的话，中国政府和尼日利亚政府都不可能帮上很大忙。

Yet Mr Obidigbo's firm, Hardis and Dromedas, manages quite well with the help of middlemen in the African diaspora. When he wants to inspect a machine he has seen on the internet, he asks an agent from his tribe, the Igbo, who lives in China to go and look at it. He has met several such people at trade fairs. "When you hear people speaking Igbo outside Nigeria, you must go and greet them," he laughs.

但是Obidigbo先生的公司，Hardis and Dromedas，在非裔移民中介的帮助下经营得很好。当他想检验一台他在网上看到的机器时，他就叫一个来自他的部落―伊博族，住在中国的代理去看看。他在贸易展览会上碰到过几个这样的人。他笑着说："当你在尼日利亚以外的地方听到有人讲伊博语的话，一定得过去打个招呼。"

He trusts them partly because they are his ethnic kin, but mostly because an Igbo middleman in Guangdong needs to maintain a good reputation. If a middleman cheats one Igbo, all the others who buy machinery in Guangdong will soon know about it. News travels fast on the diaspora grapevine.

他信任他们，部分是因为他们是他的同族，但主要是因为在广东的伊博人需要维持好名声。如果某个中介欺骗一个伊博人的话，其他所有在广东买机器的人很快都会知道这件事。消息在移民情报网中传播得很快。

Thanks in part to Mr Obidigbo's diaspora connections, Hardis and Dromedas is thriving. It employs 300 workers and sells about 300m naira-worth ($2m) of products each year. And it is just one of many African firms that use migrants as their eyes and ears in distant lands. The number of Africans living in China has exploded from hardly any two decades ago to tens of thousands today. One area of Guangzhou is now home to so many African traders that the locals call it Qiao-ke-li Cheng (Chocolate City).

某种程度上由于Obidigbo先生跟移民的关系，Hardis and Dromedas正在欣欣向荣地发展。它雇用了300个工人而且每年卖出大约价值3亿奈拉（2百万美元）的产品。它只是众多在遥远大陆上使用移民作为它们耳目的公司之一。住在中国的非洲人的数量已经从二十年前的几乎没几个人，爆炸式地增长到了现在的数以万计。广州的一个地区现在是很多非洲商人的聚居地，以至于当地人管那儿叫"巧克力城"。

The ability to use informal networks built on trust and a sense of belonging is not restricted to honest businesses such as soap making. Those with dirty hands can build criminal networks on a very similar basis. Many past diasporas have housed a "thing of our own", or Cosa Nostra, as the Sicilians put it, and some still do. But new technology may tip the scales in favour of those abiding by the law, at least a little. National police forces still do not co-operate seamlessly, but they are much easier to connect than once they were. And the ability of migrants to communicate with home directly leaves less room for sometimes criminal middlemen.

运用建立在信任和归属感基础上的非正式的网络的能力并不局限于诸如肥皂制造业之类的诚信经营。那些犯罪分子也可以在非常相似的基础上建立犯罪网络。许多从前的移民聚居地都曾经有过"咱们的行当"，或者像西西里人叫的"科萨・诺斯特拉（Cosa Nostra，美国黑手党犯罪集团的秘密代号）"，在一些聚居地依然存在。但是新技术的天平可能，至少是些许地，更倾向于那些遵纪守法的人们。各国的警察机构还是无法做到通力合作，但是比起以前，他们的联系来得更容易了。而且移民们直接跟家里联系的能力留给偶然犯罪的中介的空间也小了。

In through the out door

以退为进

The Chinese and Indian diasporas have long been commercially important. In previous generations, however, China and India themselves were closed economies, so overseas Chinese and Indian traders had to content themselves with linking foreign ports to each other (the Chinese in South-East Asia, for example, and the Indians in parts of Africa). That has completely changed. The overseas Chinese now connect the world to China and China to the world. The Indians do the same for India.

中国和印度的移民聚居地一直以来都具有重要的商业价值。然而，在前几代的时候，中国和印度的商人不得不通过相互联系的外国港口来满足自己的需要（例如，在东南亚的中国人和在非洲一些地方的印度人）。这一切已经彻底改变了。现在海外华人将世界呈现在中国面前，把中国呈现在世界面前。印度人做着同样的事情。

Consider the Riadys, an ethnic Chinese family who have lived in Indonesia for nearly a century. Mochtar Riadyestablished the family fortune after the second world war, first as a bicycle trader, then by buying a bank, then by founding the Lippo Group, a conglomerate.

想想瑞亚迪家族（the Riadys），一个在印度尼西亚居住了近一个世纪的华裔家族。李文正（印尼名字，Mochtar Riady）在第二次世界大战之后积累下了这份家族财富，起初是靠做自行车生意，后来买下了一家银行，再后来建立了企业集团，即力宝集团（Lippo Group）。

Throughout his career he relied on his relationships with other Chinese exiles. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School (HBS) who has written a study of the Riady family, argues that for the Lippo Group, "networking is not just supportive of the business strategy; networking is the business strategy," and that ethnic ties serve as an "entrepreneurial springboard." Mr Riady would probably agree. "Without a network, we can do nothing," he once said.

在他整个生涯中，他都依靠跟其他背井离乡的华人的关系。曾经写过一篇关于瑞亚迪家族的研究报告的哈佛商学院（HBS）的教授罗莎贝斯•莫斯•坎特（Rosabeth Moss Kanter）认为，对于力宝集团来说，"关系网不只是支持商业策略；关系网就是商业策略，"而且种族联系起的就是"创业跳板"作用。李文正先生很可能会赞同他的观点。他曾经说过："没有一个关系网的话，我们什么也做不了。"

The Riadys spread from Indonesia into Hong Kong and Singapore. In the 1980s they moved into America, hooking up with Chinese-American firms engaged in trans-Pacific trade. After Indonesia restored normal diplomatic ties with China in 1990, Mr Riady spent eight months touring the Middle Kingdom by car, sniffing out opportunities and forging new friendships. The Lippo Group―which has interests that range from property to supermarkets and newspapers―is investing in a variety of businesses in second-tier Chinese cities, where Western multinationals have been slow to penetrate. John Riady, Mochtar Riady's grandson, says Chinese contacts "really make us feel at home." The government in Beijing has set up a ministry to deal with the overseas Chinese.

瑞亚迪家族从印度尼西亚一直扩张到香港和新加坡。在上世纪80年代的时候他们搬去了美国，开始了与从事跨太平洋贸易的美国华人企业的合作。在上世纪90年代印度尼西亚恢复跟中国的正常邦交之后，李文正先生花了8个月的时间乘车游览了"中央帝国"，发现了很多机会也结交了很多新朋友。力宝集团―对从房地产到超市到报纸行业都很感兴趣―正在对中国二线城市的许多行业进行投资，而西方跨国企业还未能发现那里的商机。李文正的孙子约翰・瑞亚迪（John Riady）说，同中国同胞的接触"真的让我们感觉像在家里一般轻松自在。"北京的中央政府已经成立了一个部门来处理华侨事务。

Small wonder. Most of the foreign direct investment that flows into China is handled by the Chinese diaspora,loosely defined. Of the $105 billion of FDI in 2010, some two-thirds came from places where the population is more or less entirely ethnic Chinese (see chart). That includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, which are officially part of China. But these two places operate as if they are part of the diaspora. Citizens of Taiwan are entirely outside Beijing's control. Hong Kongers are not, but they enjoy secure property rights and the rule of law in much the same way that Chinese Americans and Chinese Singaporeans do.

这些都不足为奇。大致上可以说，大部分流入中国的外国直接投资都是由海外华人操控的。在2010年1050亿的外国直接投资中，有大约二分之三来自于人口多少全是华裔的地方（见图表）。其中包括香港和台湾，按官方说法它们都是中国的一部分。但是这两个地方运作得好像它们也是海外华人区的一部分似的。台湾的居民完全是在中国政府的控制之外的。香港居民就不是了，但是他们享受很大程度上跟美籍华人和新加坡华人一样的可靠的财产权和法治。

These data may be misleading. Mainland Chinese businesses sometimes launder money through Hong Kong to exploit Chinese government incentives for foreign investment. Nevertheless, it is clear that ethnic Chinese are far more confident about investing in China than anyone else. They understand the local business culture. They know whom to trust.

但是这些数据可能具有误导作用。有时候中国大陆的企业会利用中国政府鼓励外国投资这一点通过香港的渠道洗黑钱。然而，显然华人比起其他任何人对于在中国投资都要自信得多。他们了解当地的商业文化。他们知道应该信任谁。

Which is why they also serve as a bridge for foreigners who wish to do business in China. A study by William Kerr and Fritz Foley of HBS showed that American firms that employ lots of Chinese Americans find it much easier to set up operations in China without the need for a joint venture with a local firm.

这也是他们能为那些想在中国做生意的外国人牵线搭桥的原因。哈佛商学院的威廉姆・克尔（William Kerr）
和弗里茨・福利（Fritz Foley）的一项研究表明，雇用大量美籍华裔的美国公司发现不需要跟当地企业联合经营也能很容易地在中国开始经营活动。

While some migrants settle down, others study or work abroad for a while and then return home, and others go first to one place, then another. "People don't have to choose between countries," says Kathleen Newland of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC. "They can keep a foot in two or more." Their ceaseless circulation spreads ideas and expertise as the body's blood spreads oxygen and glucose.

有一些移民在国外定居，有一些在学习或者工作了一段时间之后又回到国内，还有的去了一个又一个地方。哥伦比亚特区华盛顿移民政策研究所的凯斯琳・纽兰（Kathleen Newland）说："人们不需要在国家之间做出选择，他们可以往返于两个或者更多的国家之间。"他们不停的流动输送了理念和专业知识，就好像身体的血液输送氧和葡萄糖。

Bringing it all back home

收为己用

The benefits can be seen at places such as Fortis, a chain of 50 private hospitals in India. Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, the brothers who built the company up, both studied business in the United States. That imparted what Shivinder calls "a certain discipline". "If you live only in India, you naturally measure yourself against Indian standards," he says. "If you have lived abroad, you measure yourself against the best in the world."

这些好处可以在诸如富通集团（Fortis）的地方得以见证，这是一家拥有50家连锁医院的印度公司。开创这家公司的马尔温德和舍温德辛格兄弟（Malvinder and Shivinder Singh），都曾经在美国读过商科。那段经历教给了他们，舍温德所说的"某种原则"。"如果你只住在印度，你自然而然按照印度的标准来衡量自己"，他说："如果你住在国外，你会按照世界上最高的标准来衡量自己。"

During their father's terminal cancer the brothers had a sad opportunity to see the American health-care system up close. Shivinder observed that the best American hospitals did not just have good doctors. They were also superbly organised. Doctors follow carefully documented procedures instead of relying solely on their instincts, as Indian doctors tended to. This might cramp the style of one or two medical geniuses, but it also raised ordinary physicians to a consistently high standard.

在他们父亲罹患癌症的晚期，两兄弟借这个悲伤的机会近距离观察了美国的医疗体系。舍温德注意到，美国最好的医院不只是有好医生而已，他们的组织也十分严密。医生严格遵守书面章程，而不是像印度医生那样倾向于仅仅依靠他们的直觉。这样做可能会束缚一两个医学天才的发挥，但是这也把普通内科医生提高到了一致的高标准上。

Fortis hospitals reimagined that American excellence to fit a frugal Indian setting. A leading surgeon in America might perform 250-350 operations a year. A surgeon at a Fortis hospital will perform 1,200. An army of helpers takes care of all the mundane tasks, leaving surgeons free to concentrate on the surgery. So even though the Singhs pay their doctors well, a kidney operation that might cost $100,000 in America costs less than $10,000.

富通医院改造了美国医疗的长处以适应印度医疗资源紧张的环境。一名权威的美国外科医生可能一年做250-350个手术，而一名富通医院的外科医生则要做1,200个手术。有一大群助手协助做那些简单的任务，使外科医生能专注于外科手术。所以即使辛格兄弟给他们的医生支付高薪，一个在美国可能花费10万美元的肾脏手术在他们这儿也花不了1万美元。

To keep up with cutting-edge medicine, Fortis "very aggressively" recruits Indian doctors who have studied or worked abroad, says Shivinder. They bring back specialised skills, some of which were not previously available in India, such as transapical procedures for heart patients and ballooning techniques in spinal surgery. They also bring contacts: when a tough problem arises, they know whom to e-mail for advice.

舍温德说，为了跟上前沿医学，富通医院"野心勃勃"招募在国外学习或工作过的印度医生。他们带回来专业技术，其中一些之前在印度都是无法使用的，比如为心脏病人进行经心尖的手术和在脊柱手术中运用气胀术。他们也带来同外界的联系：当一个棘手的问题出现时，他们知道给谁发邮件寻求建议。

Because migrants see the world through more than one cultural lens, they often spot opportunities invisible to their monocultural neighbours. For example, Cheung Yan, a Chinese woman living in America, noticed that Americans threw out mountains of waste paper and that ships carrying Chinese goods to America often steamed back half-empty. So she gathered up waste paper and shipped it to China for recycling into cardboard boxes, many of which were then returned to America with televisions inside. Her insight made Mrs Cheung a billionaire.

因为移民通过不止一个文化视角来观察世界，所以他们经常能发现他们的单一文化背景的邻居们看不见的机会。例如，陈阳（Cheung Yan，音译），一个住在美国的华裔女性，注意到美国人丢掉的废纸堆积成山而运输中国货物到美国的船只经常是空着一半回去的。因此她收集废纸运回中国回收利用做成纸箱，其中许多之后又装着电视机被运回了美国。陈太太的洞察力使她成了一个亿万富翁。

Going to California

奔向加州

The world is full of budding Cheung Yans. Immigrants are only an eighth of America's population, but a quarter of the engineering and technology firms started there between 1995 and 2005 had an immigrant founder, according to Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University.

这个世界到处都存在着潜在的陈阳。杜克大学（Duke University）的维沃克・沃德瓦（Vivek Wadhwa）说，移民只占美国人口的八分之一，但是美国1995年到2005年成立的工程技术公司有四分之一是由移民创办的。

The exceptional creativity of immigrants doubtless reflects the sort of people who up sticks and get visas. But work by William Maddux of INSEAD (a business school) and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern Universitysuggests that exile itself makes people creative.

移民非凡的创造力无疑映射出了那些能够坚持并最终拿到签证的人们。但是欧洲工商管理学院（INSEAD）的威廉姆・麦多克斯和美国西北大学（Northwestern University）的亚当・加林斯基（Adam Galinsky）的研究成果却表明，背井离乡本身就能让人们变得富有创造力。

They compared MBA students who had lived abroad with otherwise similar students who had not, using an experiment in which each was given a candle, a box of matches and a box of drawing pins. The students' task was to attach the candle to a wall so that it burned properly and did not drip wax on the table or the floor. This Duncker candle problem, as it is known, is considered a good test of creativity because it requires you to imagine something being used for a purpose quite different from its usual one. Some 60% of the migrants saw the solution―pinning the drawing-pin box to the wall as a makeshift sconce―against 42% of non-migrants.

他们比较了住在国外的和没有住在国外的工商管理学硕士学生。在他们的实验里，每个学生都分到一根蜡烛、一盒火柴和一盒图钉。学生们的任务是把蜡烛固定在墙上，让蜡烛平稳地燃烧而不会把蜡滴到桌子或者地板上。众所周知，这个邓克尔蜡烛难题被认为是一个很好的创造力测试，因为它要求你想象出某物跟它通常用途大不相同的使用方法。大约60%的移民学生发现了解决办法―把装图钉的盒子钉在墙上当烛台替代品――对比只有42%的非移民学生发现了这个办法。

New York, new Yorker

纽约，新纽约人

The creativity of migrants is enhanced by their ability to enroll collaborators both far-off and nearby. In Silicon Valley, more than half of Chinese and Indian scientists and engineers share tips about technology or business opportunities with people in their home countries, according to AnnaLee Saxenian of the University of California, Berkeley. A study by the Kauffman Foundation, a think-tank, found that 84% of returning Indian entrepreneurs maintain at least monthly contact with family and friends in America, and 66% are in contact at least that often with former colleagues. For entrepreneurs who return to China, the figures are 81% and 55%. The subjects they talk about most are customers (61% of Indians and 74% of Chinese mention this), markets (62% of Indians, 71% of Chinese), technical information (58% of Indians, 68% of Chinese) and business funding (31% of Indians, 54% of Chinese).

移民们招募无论远近的合作者的能力提升了他们的创造力。伯克利的加利福尼亚大学的安娜莉・萨克瑟尼安（AnnaLee Saxenian）说，在硅谷有一半以上的中国和印度科学家和工程师同他们祖国的人们分享有关技术和商机的信息。智库考夫曼基金会（Kauffman Foundation）的一项研究发现，84%的印度归国企业家跟在美国的家人朋友保持至少一个月一次的联系，66%跟从前的同事保持同样频率的联系。对于回到中国的企业家来说，这两个数字分别是81%和50%。他们谈论得最多的话题是客户（61%的印度企业家和74%的中国企业家提到这一点），市场（印度62%，中国71%），技术信息（印度58%，中国68%）和商业资金（印度31%，中国54%）。

Mr Kerr has devised an ingenious study which uses patent information to measure how knowledge moves through diaspora networks. Looking at the names on American patent records, and guessing that an inventor called Zhang was probably ethnic Chinese, whereas someone called Rubio was probably Hispanic, he calculated that foreign researchers cite researchers of their own ethnicity based in America 30-50% more often than you would expect if ethnic ties made no difference.

克尔先生设计了一个巧妙的研究，使用专利信息来衡量知识是如何推动移民关系网发展的。看看美国专利登记上的名字，猜想一个姓张的投资者很可能是个华人，反之叫卢比奥的则可能是个西班牙人。他统计得出，外国研究人员起用在美国的他们本民族的研究人员的概率比可能预计的种族关系不起作用的情况下，要多出30%-50%。

It is not just that Brazilian scientists in São Paulo read papers written by Brazilian scientists in America. There's also gossip. Brazilian scientists in America will often alert their old classmates in São Paulo to intriguing research being done at the lab down the hall. And the information flows both ways.

在圣保罗的巴西科学家不只是阅读在美国的巴西科学家写的论文。他们还交换小道消息。在美国的巴西科学家通常会提醒他们在圣保罗的老同学有些将要在实验室进行里的有趣实验。在圣保罗的巴西科学家也会告知他们在美国的老同学他们的进展。

A study in 2011 by the Royal Society found that cross-border scientific collaboration is growing more common, that it disproportionately involves scientists with diaspora ties and that it appears to lead to better science (using the frequency with which research is cited as a rough measure). A Chinese paper co-written with a scientist in America is cited three times as often as one produced solely in China.

英国皇家学会（Royal Society）于2011年做的一项研究表明，跨国科学合作正在变得越来越稀松平常，有大量的有海外关系的科学家参与其中而且这样似乎能产出更先进的科学成果（使用研究成果被引用的频率作为粗略的衡量手段）。一份由美国科学家参与写作的中国论文被引用的次数是一份仅由中国出产的论文被引用次数的三倍。

Ramble on

闲庭信步

Diaspora ties help businesses as well as scientists to collaborate. What may be the world's cheapest fridge was conceived from a marriage of ideas generated by Indians in India and Indians overseas. Uttam Ghoshal, Himanshu Pokharna and Ayan Guha, three Indian-American engineers, had an idea for a cooling engine, based on technology used to cool laptop computers, that they thought might work in a fridge. In India visiting relatives they decided to show their idea to Godrej & Boyce, an Indian manufacturing firm.

海外关系不但帮助科学家进行合作，还有企业的合作。制造全世界最便宜的冰箱的设想就源自于在印度和在国外的印度人的想法的结合。三个美籍印度工程师，乌塔姆・戈沙尔（Uttam Ghoshal）、希曼舒・波克哈那（Himanshu Pokharna）和阿颜・古哈（Ayan Guha）想要制造一台冷却机，而他们这个想法的基础是他们觉得同样会适用于冰箱的，用于给笔记本电脑散热的技术。在印度拜访亲戚的时候，他们决定把他们的想法告诉一家印度制造企业―戈德雷吉集团（Godrej & Boyce）。

Mr Pokharna wheedled an introduction from a young member of the Godrej family, exploiting the fact that both had been at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school. They discovered that Godrej was already working on a cheap fridge for rural Indians too poor to fork out the $200 normally required, let alone the subsequent electric bills.

波克哈那先生利用两人都曾经在宾夕法尼亚大学的沃顿商学院学习过的事实，巧舌如簧地说服了戈德雷吉家族的一位年轻成员替他们引见。他们发现戈德雷吉集团已经开始研制一种比较便宜的冰箱，对象是那些太贫穷而无法负担通常要价200美元的冰箱，更不用说随后的电费账单的印度农村人。

Jamshyd Godrej, the firm's chairman, was determined to make a cheap battery-powered fridge. With the help of Mr Ghoshal's cooling chip, his team produced the Chotu Kool ("little cool"): light, portable, small and cheap. Mr Ghoshal's firm in Texas, Sheetak Inc, is working with Godrej to make it more efficient.

公司主席约什德・戈德雷吉（Jamshyd Godrej）决心要制造一种便宜的靠电池供电的冰箱。在戈沙尔先生的冷却芯片的帮助下，他的团队制造出了Chotu Kool("little cool"小酷)：轻盈、便捷、小巧还不贵。戈沙尔先生在德克萨斯州州的公司，Sheetak Inc，正在跟戈德雷吉公司合作意图使这种冰箱变得更好用。

The "new type of hyperconnectivity" that enables such projects is fundamental to today's networked diasporas, according to Carlo Dade, of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, a think-tank. "Migrants are now connected instantaneously, continuously, dynamically and intimately to their communities of origin...This is a fundamental and profound break from the past eras of migration." That break explains why diasporas, always marginalised in the flat-map world of national territories, find themselves in the thick of things as the world becomes networked.

智库加拿大美洲基金会（Canadian Foundation for the Americas）的卡洛・戴德（Carlo Dade）说，使此类项目成为可能的"新式的超度连结"对于现在相互之间联系紧密的移民们来说至关重要。"现在移民们跟他们的种族社区迅速、持续、动态和亲密地联系在了一起…这是对从前移民时代根本且深远的突破。"这种突破解释了，总是在国家领土的平面地图上被边缘化的移民，在世界网络化的时候发现自己活跃在最前沿的领域的原因。

Shrewd firms are taking notice. China's high-tech industry is dominated by returnees from abroad, such as Robin Li and Eric Xu, the founders of Baidu, China's leading search engine. Asked how many of his top people had worked or studied abroad, N. Chandrasekaran, the boss of Tata Consulting Services, a big Indian IT firm, replies: "All of them."

善于经营的公司正在注意到这一切。中国的高科技产业现在被海归们所把持，比如中国最大的搜索引擎百度（Baidu）的创始人李彦宏（Robin Li）和徐勇（Eric Xu）。当被问及他的顶尖员工中有多少人在国外学习过的时候，印度最大的IT公司塔塔咨询服务（Tata Consulting Services）的老板N.钱德瑞萨克伦（N. Chandrasekaran）回答说："所有人。"

from the print edition | Briefing