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