近期经济学人

Science and technology

科学技术

Solar-powered flight 太阳能动力飞行

A REVOLUTIONARY solar-powered aircraft touched down recently at Moffett Airfield, in the heart of Silicon Valley. 一架革命性的太阳能飞机近日在硅谷中心的墨菲特联邦机场着陆。

Bertrand Piccard, one of Solar Impulse's founders, had been in the same situation before and knew that success comes by learning from mistakes and moving on. 太阳驱动的创始人之一—伯特兰·皮卡德也曾深陷此境，他深知技术的推进只能是吃一堑，长一智。

In 1999 he co-piloted Orbiter 3, the first balloon to circumnavigate the globe. 1999年，皮卡德曾

担任轨道飞行器3号的副驾驶，这是第一个实现环球飞行的热气球。

He teamed up with Andre Borschberg, a fighter pilot and engineer, to form the Solar Impulse project. 于是他与战斗机飞行员兼工程师—安德烈·博尔施伯格通力合作，共同发起了太阳驱动计划。

The problem with the wing spar has set back the team a year. 这个团队花费了一年时间来解决

翼梁故障。

The plan is to take off in an easterly direction and land on every continent that touches the Tropic

of Cancer. 飞机将于东部地区起飞，随后在北回归线附近的每一块陆地降落。

To give Mr Piccard and Mr Borschberg room to exercise and lie down, the next aircraft will be about 15% bigger than the prototype, which tips the scales（称重为……）at just 1,600kg. 为了给皮卡德和博尔施伯格足够的空间移动和躺卧，新的飞机将比原型机大15%，总重达1600

千克。

The wing spar that broke had been redesigned with an ultralight carbon-fibre process to shed the grams. 先前破损的翼梁用超轻型碳纤维材料重新打造以降低克重。

That is enough, the team calculate, to ward off some of the effects of sleep deprivation. 团队成员

通过计算认为这些时间足够抵御睡眠不足带来的不利影响。

The pilot must not be too groggy if he has to swing suddenly into action. 当飞行员突然驾驶时，他一定不可以过于疲劳。

This procedure has been tested in a flight simulator for 72 hours non-stop, and seems to work. 这

套流程已在模拟飞行器中进行了72小时不间断测试，效果卓著。

At this altitude, though, the air is thin and an oxygen supply is needed. 由于海拔较高，空气稀薄，必须提供足够的氧气。

It is not the sort of thing to try in a jumbo jet. 而这在巨型喷气式飞机上是不可想象的。

Battery technology

电池技术

A pile of wood

一堆木头

An old material may find a new use in batteries 一种古老的原材料可能会在电池上发挥它的新用途。

ON A list of cutting-edge materials for high-tech applications, you might not expect to see wood near the top. 在一个应用于高科技的尖端材料目录上，看到木材会名列前茅，你可能不会想到。

As any high-school chemist knows, lithium and sodium are chemically similar. 任何一个高中的化学家都知道，锂和钠的化学性质很相似。

But engineers would still like to devise a commercially viable sodium battery, because sodium is much more abundant than lithium. 但是，从商业角度来讲，钠资源远比锂资源丰富，所以工程师们仍旧希望能够发明一种能够使用的钠电池。

Dr Li and Dr Hu wondered if the problem of electrode damage might be ameliorated by using a more pliant material for the frames on which the electrodes are suspended. 李博士和胡博士想弄清楚，如果使用一种构成电池框架的，更柔韧的材料—以达到延缓电极的目的，这样是否可以改善有关电极损坏方面的问题。

Wood, then, seems a plausible candidate for battery frames. 所以，木村似乎是电池架构的合理备用材料。

Cheap storage is the missing part of the solar-energy jigsaw—for solar cells themselves are now cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels, in sunny climes at least. 便宜的太阳能储存是完善太阳能行业目前所急需的—因为与化石燃料相比，现在的太阳能电池已经很便宜了，至少在阳光明媚的天气是这样的。

It would be a delicious irony if the jigsaw was completed not by one of these snazzy new substances but by one of the oldest materials around. 如果太阳能行业这个拼图的完美不是来

自于这些时尚的新材料，而来源于人们周围一种最古老的材料，那将会是一个极大的讽刺。

The origins of war

战争的起源

Old soldiers?

古老的战士？

The latest research suggests humans are not warriors in their genes, after all

最新研究发现人类骨子里有的不是杀伐

EDWARD WILSON, the inventor of the field of sociobiology, once wrote that war is embedded in our very nature.

艾德华·威尔森是生物社会学领域的创始人。他曾经写道战争深植于我们的骨子里。

This is a belief commonly held not just by sociobiologists but also by anthropologists and other students of human behaviour.

这种观点不仅生物社会学家普遍认同，人类学家以及一些研究人类行为的学者也认同。

They base it not only on the propensity of modern man to go to war with his neighbours but also on observations of the way those who still live a pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer life behave.

认同的基础有两点：现代的人们有与邻为敌的倾性；对那些仍然生活在农业社会以前的采集狩猎者的观察结果。

Add this to field studies of the sometimes violent behaviour of mankind's closest living relative, the chimpanzee, and the idea that making war is somehow in humanity's genes has seemed quite plausible.

除此之外，还可以到野外观察一下与人类亲缘关系最为相近的黑猩猩，可以知道黑猩猩有时也有暴力行为。由此，威尔森的观点似乎相当有说服力。

It has even been advanced as an explanation for the extreme levels of self- sacrificial altruism people sometimes display.

其实，这种观点早已有人提出过，用来解释自称牺牲的利他主义者有时表现出来的那种极端行为。

But a paper in this week's Science, by Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg of Abo Akademi University, in Finland, questions all this.

本周，芬兰埃博学术大学的道格拉斯·弗莱和帕特里克·索德伯格在《科学》杂志上发表了论文，提出了疑问。

Dr Fry and Mr Soderberg have reviewed what is known about modern hunter-gatherers.

他们负责对被称为现代狩猎采集者的研究做出评论。

They suggest that although such people are far from peaceful they are also far from warlike.

他们说，虽然这些人远不是和平之士，但他们也远不是好战之人。

Most who die violent deaths in their societies do so at the hands of fellow tribesmen, not foreigners.

在他们的社会中，多数死于同族人暴力的人，而不是外来者暴力的人，也会施展暴力。

Murderers, this research suggests, humans may often be.

论文称，人类可能经常会成为杀人者。

But they are not the died-in-the-wool warriors of anthropological legend.

但是，又不是人类学传奇上的那种马革裹尸的武士。

Dr Fry and Mr Soderberg came to this conclusion by scrutinising 21 hunter- gatherer societies from all over the world.

他们两人对全世界21个猎狩社会进行了仔细观察，得出了此项结论。

They looked at ethnographic studies of these groups, published over the past 100 years or so.

他们浏览了这些族群的种族志研究结果。

Inter alia, these studies recorded homicides and their circumstances.

这些研究发表于大约100年以前，特别纪录了杀人行为以及原委。

The two researchers classified such deaths into interpersonal events, interfamilial feuds,

group-sanctioned executions and intergroup events.

他们把死因分为人际关系矛盾，家庭不和，族群判决的死刑，族群间矛盾。

Only the latter could be described as war.

只有后两者称为战争。

One of the 21 groups was extremely warlike.

21个族群中有一个极度好战。

More than half of recorded killings perpetrated by the Tiwi, an Australian people, were acts of war—and nearly half of all homicides from all causes in all 21 groups involved the Tiwi.

这个族群就是澳大利亚的提维人。研究中纪录了他们的杀戮行为，其中多半数的都属战争行为。21个族群所有的杀戮原委中近半数的涉及提维族。

This group was such an outlier that Dr Fry and Mr Soderberg did their analysis twice: once with and once without the Tiwi.

这个族群极度异常，两人进行了两次分析：一次涉及提维族，另一次没有。

Nomad's land

游牧民族的土地

Excluding the Tiwi, deaths in war were only 15% of the total.

排除提维族，战争致死的人数是全部的15%；

Including them, the figure was 34%.

否则是34%。

But even that is still a minority.

但仍然不够充分，

These numbers do not suggest hunter-gatherers are going out looking for trouble with their neighbours.

不能说明问题―猎狩者跑出去找麻烦。

This finding seems different from that arrived at in 2009 by Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico.

这项发现与新墨西哥圣菲研究所的塞缪尔·鲍尔斯2009年的研究结果不同。

Dr Bowles looked at eight modern hunter-gatherer groups, including the Tiwi, and at archaeological evidence concerning 15 ancient ones.

鲍尔斯研究了8个现代猎狩族群和15个古代猎狩族群的考古证据，得出了结论：

He concluded that death in warfare is so common in hunter-gatherer societies that it was an important evolutionary pressure on early Homo sapiens, and might easily account for the emergence of self-sacrificial altruism.

猎狩社会中发生的战争死亡现象非常普遍，变成了早期人类进化的压力。这就轻松地说明自我牺牲的利他主义的出现。

Dr Bowles's analysis did not, however, separate the Tiwi from the rest, so was influenced by this outlier.

然而，鲍尔斯的分析并没有把提维族与其它族分离开来，因此受到了这种异常现象的影响。

Treating outliers with caution is reasonable.

认真对待这种异常现象是合乎情理的。

An analysis of modern warfare that looked at the 1940s would come to a different conclusion from one that looked at the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.

有一项分析着眼于1940年代的现代战事，得出的结论与着眼于1950年代，1960年代，1970年代，1980年代以及1990年代的不同。

Nor could the archaeological studies clearly indicate which violent deaths were caused by war.

而且考古学研究也不能说明哪一项暴力致死的原因是战争。

As Dr Bowles himself says, one cannot always distinguish between deaths due to intergroup violence and that occurring within groups.

正如鲍尔斯本人所说，总是分不清哪些死亡是族群间暴力所致，哪些是同族群暴力所致。

Dr Bowles was not the first to conclude that war was common during human evolution.

战争是人类进化当中的普遍现象，得出此结论鲍尔斯并不是第一人。

Early in the 20th century, studies of the Yanomami, who live in the Amazon rainforest, suggested as much.

20世纪早期，对生活在亚马逊雨林的诺马米人的研究已经进行了大量论证。

But that idea was overthrown when, decades later, a researcher called Brian Ferguson re-examined all documented cases of Yanomami warfare.

但是，几十年后又被布莱恩·弗格森推翻。

These, he found, were overwhelmingly in areas penetrated by settlers rather than in places where the Yanomami dwelt undisturbed.

他重新研究了诺马米人所有的战事文献。他发现，这些战事都发生在有人迹的地方，而不是诺马米人安居的地方。

Something similar happened to chimpanzee researchers.

那些研究黑猩猩的学者们也进行了方式相似的研究。

The first big field study of these animals was done by Jane Goodall.

珍·古德进行了首次大型野外研究。

Her chimps, which live in Tanzania, are often aggressive, sometimes engage in cannibalism, and even steal and kill others' infants. And they do engage in something that looks like warfare.

她研究的黑猩猩生活在坦桑尼亚，好斗性强，有时会残食同类，偷盗甚至杀死猩猩婴儿，跟战争相似。

When a large group of chimps split, for instance, vicious intertribal conflict followed.

一大群猩猩内讧时，就会产生恶性冲突。

All this suggests an evolutionary origin for some of the darker aspects of human nature.

这些都表明了人性中那些较黑暗面的进化起源。

A second study, though, conducted in Congo-Brazzaville by David Morgan and Crickette Sanz of Washington University, in St Louis, came to contrary conclusions.

华盛顿大学圣路易斯分校的大卫·摩根和克瑞斯克特-桑兹在刚果共和国进行了又一项研究，得出了相反的结论：

It found chimps to be peaceful creatures.

此处的黑猩猩是安静的动物。

For a while, that confused primatologists.

这又使灵长类学家迷惑不解。

The difference between the two populations turns out to be density.

两处猩群的生活差别越来越大。

The Tanzanian chimps are crowded together as deforestation around their reserve reduces the amount of habitat available.

在坦桑尼亚，黑猩猩所生活的自然保护区周边地区进行了大量的森林采伐，减少了栖息之地的数量，只能团抱度日。

Those in Congo do not, at least yet, suffer in this way.

刚果的则没有。

Chimps, then, do offer a useful lesson on the origin of warfare—just not the one that was originally believed.

非洲黑猩猩确实能让人了解到冲突的起源―并不是先前的那样。

Groups of chimpanzees, like groups of people, will fight each other if need be, but will otherwise leave each other alone.

群居的黑猩猩跟群居的人类一样，矛盾激化时也会打架，再不了就是谁也不理谁。

Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.

跟人类的猎狩祖先相比，现代化、工业化之下的人是否更加好战，还是不太好战，已经不得而知。

The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.

机枪的杀伤力比弓箭要更大，但这种比较是无意义的。

One thing that is true, though, is that murder rates have fallen over the centuries, as policing has spread and the routine carrying of weapons has diminished.

有一点是肯定的，近几个世纪来，警力扩大了，带枪的惯例减少了，谋杀率下降了。

Modern society may not have done anything about war. But peace is a lot more peaceful.

现代社会可能没有改变战争，但社会秩序要更稳定了。

Commercial aircraft

商用飞机

Bombardier lights a fuse

庞巴迪公司点燃了导火线

Canada's new passenger jet threatens an old duopoly

加拿大新型客机给两强垄断集团带来威胁

SINCE the late 1990s airlines wanting to buy short-to-medium-haul narrowbody planes with

100-200 seats have had little choice but to pick either Boeing's 737 or Airbus's A320.

从20世纪90年代末期开始，想要购买中短途100至200座窄身飞机的航空公司别无选择只能选择波音737或者空客A320。

As orders for such planes have boomed in recent years, aircraft-makers in China, Russia and Canada have been working on new contenders to break this American-European duopoly.

近年来，随着对此类飞机需求的激增，中国、俄罗斯及加拿大飞机制造商们一直致力于研究新的竞争者来打破美欧两强垄断的局面。

On September 16th Canada's Bombardier got there first, launching the maiden flight of its CSeries plane.

9月16日，加拿大怕巴蒂公司首先达成目标，进行了其C系列飞机的首航。

Bombardier is duelling the duopolists because the prospects for the planes it already makes—regional jets of under 100 seats and corporate jets—are not as juicy as those for mainstream commercial airliners.

庞巴迪公司在与两强作斗争，因为他公司所制造的飞机—100座以下区域性飞机和公司商务机的前景并不像主流商用飞机那样报酬丰富。

Global passenger traffic is set to grow by 5% a year for the next two decades, reckons Boeing, and airlines are seeking ones that seat 100-200 to fill much of the new demand.

波音公司认为，接下来20年，全球客流量预期每年上升5%，航空公司正在寻找那种100到200座的飞机以满足新的需求。

In regional jets Bombardier has enjoyed a near-duopoly of its own, with Embraer of Brazil.

在支线飞机中，庞巴迪与巴西航空公司享有几乎两强垄断的地位。

But Japanese, Russian and Chinese rivals are moving in to the market just as operators of regional jets are going for bigger planes.

但是，就在支线飞机运营商需要更大飞机时，日本、俄罗斯及中国的竞争对手正进入该市场。

Corporate jets and their owners took a knock in the financial crisis, and their prospects still look weak.

公司商务机及其所有者在经济危机中受到了打击，而且他们的前景看起来仍很渺茫。

Although lots of new metro systems are being built worldwide, Bombardier's other main business, building trains does not look so strong. About two-thirds of the division's revenues come from Europe, where trains are largely bought with public purses drained by faltering economies.

虽然世界范围内都在建造大众捷运系统，庞巴迪另外一项主要业务，制造火车看起来并非那么强。该部门2/3的收益来自欧洲。因为经济衰退造成国库空虚，欧洲大量购买火车。

Bombardier is trying to slip in under the radar, not competing head-on with its rivals.

庞巴迪公司试图在雷达下偷偷溜进，而不是与竞争对手正面冲突。

The first two versions of the CSeries will have only 100-150 seats, whereas most 737s and A320s sold are 150-200 seaters.

最初的两种C系列飞机只有100到150座，而大多数出售的波音737飞机和空客A320是150到200座的。

However, Bombardier hopes airlines will be attracted by its plane's low fuel consumption—20% less than its rivals',it claims—and 15% lower running costs.

但是，庞巴迪公司希望航空公司会被飞机的低耗油特点所吸引—宣称比其竞争对手少20%的耗油量—并减少15%的运营成本。

Much of that advantage comes from a new engine, the geared turbofan, made by Pratt & Whitney, an American firm.

大部分的优势来自于一个新的引擎，也就是美国普惠发动机公司生产的齿轮传动式涡轮风扇发动机。

So far, though, airlines have held back and waited to see how the CSeries flies.

迄今为止，航空公司们还在犹豫并等着看C系列飞机的试飞情况。

Only 177 firm orders have been placed as yet.

至今只下了177单确定订单。

Some analysts wonder if starting out at the bottom end of the range was a good idea:

一些分析家怀疑从范围底层开始是不是一个好办法：

Darryl Genovesi of UBS, a bank, reckons that there are 5,000 jets of 90-150 seats in operation and that only 2,000 are likely to be replaced over the next five to ten years, with another 1,000 on the borderline.

瑞士联合银行的达瑞尔认为现在有5000架90到150座的飞机正在运营中，只有2000架会在下一个5到10年内被取代，另外还有1000架在取代与被取代的边界。

Furthermore, Boeing and Airbus are not giving up without a dogfight.

而且，波音公司和空中客车公司不会不战而降。

Both are working on completely new narrowbodies, to be launched in a decade or so, and in the mean time their existing models are being upgraded.

两家公司都在努力发明一种完全新型的窄型飞机，希望在未来10年左右发布，同时，他们现有的模型也正在升级中。

The 737 MAX and A320neo, out in a couple of years, will get improved engines, narrowing the efficiency gap with the CSeries.

过几年，737 MAX 和A320 neo会有升级的引擎，这将缩小他们与庞巴迪C系列飞机的效率差距。

Indeed, buyers of the A320neo will be able to choose the geared turbofan.

实际上，A320neo的买家可能会选择齿轮传动式涡轮风扇发动机。

And as Zafar Khan of Societe Generale, a bank, notes, the CSeries is a new airframe and a new engine, a double risk.

正如兴业银行的扎法尔?汗说的，C系列飞机时一种新的飞机机体和新的引擎，双重的风险。

No doubt Boeing and Airbus have been pointing this out to customers, as well as offering attractive prices to deter airlines from taking a punt on the CSeries.

难怪波音公司和空客公司不仅向其客户指出这个问题，还给出了吸引人的价格来防止航空公司投资在C系列飞机上。

Both are bound to worry that Bombardier will add a larger model carrying up to 200 passengers. 两家公司一定都担心庞巴迪公司会增加那种200座的模型。

Such concerns would intensify if Bombardier makes progress on its partnership with COMAC, a Chinese state firm strongly backed by its home government, which is also building a narrowbody plane.

如果庞巴迪公司和致力于制造窄型飞机的中国政府支持的国有企业中国商用飞机公司的合作成功的话，这种担心会加剧。

The market for the current CSeries models may be only around 100 planes a year.

C系列模型目前的市场可能每年只有100架。

That may not deliver a decent return on its 4 billion development costs.

这可能对其40亿美元的开发成本来说不是一个很好的回报。

But it will keep Bombardier in the skies, circling for a more vigorous counter-attack on the duopoly.

但是这使庞巴迪公司的飞机在天空中飞翔，盘旋着对两强垄断集团进行强有力的反击。

The future of the Firm

麦肯锡的未来

McKinsey looks set to stay top of the heap in management consulting

麦肯锡看起来打算一直居于管理咨询的顶端

IT IS one of the engines of global capitalism.

麦肯锡是全球资本主义的引擎之一。

Not only does McKinsey provide advice to most of the world's leading companies.

他们不仅为大多数世界领先的公司提供建议，而且还开创了这样的想法，

It also pioneered the idea that business is a profession rather than a mere trade—and a profession that thrives on raw brainpower more than specialist industry knowledge or plain old common sense.

商业并不是单纯的贸易，而是一种职业，是依靠脑力劳动而不是专业的行业知识或是浅显易懂的旧常识。

Yet McKinsey's name has suffered a succession of blows in the past 15 years.

然而，麦肯锡的名字在过去的15年却遭受了一连串的打击。

The Firm, as it calls itself, was deeply involved in the Enron debacle:

就公司本身而言，如他们自己所说，深深的陷入了安然事件：

the energy company's boss, Jeff Skilling, was a McKinsey veteran who praised the consultancy for doing God's work, and the McKinsey Quarterly published articles on Enron as enthusiastically as Hello! runs pieces about the Beckhams.

安然能源公司的老板，也曾是麦肯锡的一名老将，杰夫·斯基林，赞扬咨询工作是上帝的使命，并在《麦肯锡季刊》上发表有关安然文章，热情满腔的好像在于贝嫂打招呼一样。

In 2010 Anil Kumar, a McKinsey consultant, admitted passing inside information to Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon, a hedge fund. Last year Rajat Gupta, a former McKinsey managing partner, was also convicted of passing inside information to Mr Rajaratnam.

在2010年，麦肯锡的顾问，阿尔尼·库马尔承认向帆船的拉贾拉特南透露了对冲基金的内部消息。去年前麦肯锡经理合伙人，拉雅·古普塔，也被怀疑向拉贾拉特南先生传递内部信息。

Life is getting tougher for professional-services firms.

如今专业服务型公司面临着越来越多的困难，

Midsized consultancies are already suffering: Monitor Group went bankrupt last year—Deloitte later bought it for 120m—and Booz & Co and Roland Berger are agonising about their futures.

去年中型咨询公司摩立特集团的破产印证了这个事实—德勤后来用了1.2亿美元买下了它—博斯公司和罗兰贝格也在烦恼自己的期货。

If the legal profession is anything to go by, worse is to come:

如果不是法律界的存在，还会有更糟糕的事发生：

Dewey & LeBoeuf collapsed last year after borrowing heavily in a dash for growth, and other elite law firms are struggling to win business.

杜威和勒伯夫为了增长而借了大量的贷款，在他们破产后，会有大量的精英律师事务所努力赢得业务。

So, are McKinsey's best days behind it?

所以，麦肯锡的黄金时光会接踵而来吗？

Two new publications offer some interesting answers.

两个新的出版刊物提供了一些有趣的答案。

The Firm, by Duff McDonald, is a generally admiring book that nevertheless asks hard questions about the organisation's future.

达夫·麦当劳的公司，普遍让人羡慕，却也仍然会考虑一些有关组织未来的难题。

Consulting on the Cusp of Disruption, by Clayton Christensen and two colleagues, is a penetrating article in the October Harvard Business Review, arguing that the comfortable world of the strategy consultancies is about to be turned upside down.

克里斯坦森和他的两位同事10月份在《哈佛商业评论》上发表了精辟的文章中提到咨询行业正处于风口浪尖，他们认为处于舒适世界的战略咨询公司即将天翻地覆。

McKinsey's success depends above all on an unimpeachable reputation for integrity.

麦肯锡的成功全部依赖于他们无可指摘的诚信声誉。

It cannot continue to serve most of the world's leading companies if its consultants are willing to spill secrets.

如果他们的顾问把内部秘密泄露了出去，他们就不能继续服务于世界领先公司。

Mr McDonald argues that the firm's size makes it impossible to avoid repeats of the Kumar problem.

麦当劳先生认为，该公司的体系使他们不可能避免库马尔问题的再次发生，

It is now a giant factory with 1,200 consultants rather than the cosy club of old.

它现在是一个拥有1200名顾问的巨大工厂，而不是一个温馨舒适的老年俱乐部。

The firm has to keep growing, not least to provide its partners with the 1.5mor so a year that they earn.

该公司将保持继续增长，但其合作伙伴必须保证每年至少为他们提供150万美元左右供他们赚取。

But every time it grows it puts its most important asset at risk.

但是每一次增长，都是一次巨大的资产风险。

McKinsey's success also depends on its ability to remain at the cutting edge of business.

麦肯锡的成功还取决于其是否有能力保持在最前沿的业务。

But in recent years it has seemed to be on the wrong cutting edge.

但是在近些年来，它似乎也是错误的尖端。

Mr McDonald points out that whereas McKinsey has led the financialisation of basic industries such as oil and gas, it has had little if any role in shaping the giants of the internet economy,

麦当劳先生指出，以麦肯锡为首的金融化产业，如石油和天然气等，如果在塑造互联网经济的巨人，

such as Apple and Google.

像苹果和谷歌一样的任何角色。

The new lords of business are engineers in hoodies, not MBAs in pinstripes.

商业化的新主人变成了穿着帽衫的工程师，而不是穿细条纹衣服的MBA硕士。

Mr Christensen focuses on a bigger subject:

克里斯滕森先生专注于一个更大的主题：

how the forces that have disrupted so many other businesses, from steel to publishing, are disrupting consulting.

这种力量是怎样毁坏了其他的商业形式，从钢铁工业到出版商，全部都需要咨询。

The big three strategy consultants—the other two are the Boston Consulting Group and Bain—are masters of opacity.

三大战略咨询—其他两个是波士顿咨询集团和贝恩—全部不透明，

But Mr Christensen argues that light is being let in on the magic.

但克里斯滕森先生认为，光芒是神奇的照射进来的，

Companies are getting better at measuring results and demanding value for money.

经过统计，参与过咨询的公司取得了更好地效果，确实物有所值。

They also have access to more business expertise than ever before: the big three have more than 50,000 living alumni.

而且他们比以前更有机会接触更多的业务专家：三巨头有超过50,000的生活校友。

The big three have been masters at bundling lots of different services into a single, high-priced package.

三巨头已经作为主人将许多不同的服务高价的绑定到一起，

But clients no longer want to pay fat fees for a bit of strategic advice from a senior partner and a lot of humdrum work from neophytes.

但是委托人应经不再想为从一个高级合作伙伴那得到一点战略建议和从一个初学者那得到许多单点无聊的工作而付出巨额费用。

Mr Christensen says low-priced competitors are beginning to dismember the consultants' business. 克里斯滕森先生说，低价位的竞争者已经开始要瓜分管理咨询的商业任务。

Eden McCallum cuts costs by deploying freelancers, most of whom once worked for the big three. 伊甸园麦卡勒姆为削减开支而雇佣的自由职业者，其中大多数曾是三巨头的成员。

BeyondCore replaces overpriced junior analysts with Big Data, crunching vast amounts of information to identify trends.

超越核心用巨大的数据库和大量的信息取代价格过高的初级分析师，来确定趋势。

McKinsey clearly faces a more difficult market than it is used to.

显然麦肯锡现在面对着一个比过去更加困难的市场。

But it has overcome serious challenges before—such as in the 1980s, when it lost the intellectual high ground to BCG and then Bain before regaining it.

但在20世纪80年代，在它落后于BCG和贝恩，失去了智力方面的制高点时，它克服了严峻的挑战。

The firm is fixing some of the problems from the Gupta era.

它从笈多时代开始就一直在修复这些问题。

It has elected two successive managing directors, Ian Davis and Dominic Barton, who have worked hard to restore its professional ethos.

它曾经有两位成功的董事总经理，伊恩·戴维斯和鲍达民，他们一直在努力恢复公司的专业精神气质。

Mr Barton urges companies to embrace long-term capitalism rather than quarterly capitalism and corporate responsibility rather than financial engineering: the very opposite of the Enron-era McKinsey's gospel.

巴顿先生敦促企业去拥抱长期的资本主义而不是季度的资本主义，去承担企业的责任而不是金融工程：与安然时代的麦肯锡福音刚好相反。

Old boys everywhere

老男孩无处不在

McKinsey also has two huge assets: talent and knowledge.

麦肯锡也有两个巨大的资产：人才和知识。

It retains an unrivalled ability to recruit hundreds of clever young people and turn them into an army of problem-solving worker ants.

它保留了无以伦比的能力，超募了数百个聪明异禀的年轻人，然后把它们变成一队解决麻烦的工蚁。

It also has an enviable network of alumni, many of whom are happy to hire their old employer: in 2011 more than 150 ex-McKinseyites were running companies with more than 1 billion in annual sales.

它也有一个令人羡慕的校友网络，其中许多人都乐意聘请他们的老雇主：在2011年，有超过150个前麦肯锡员工经营了自己公司，总年销售额超过了100亿美元。

The firm has also invested heavily in knowledge for decades:

该公司还在几十年里对知识投入巨资：

perhaps no other organisation has as much interesting data on global capitalism.

大概没有其他组织对于全球资本主义有这么多有趣的数据了。

Though lesser firms may be facing disruption, McKinsey dispenses a special sort of consultorial fairy-dust that is hard to replicate, and as much in demand as ever.

即使较小的企业可能会面临破产，麦肯锡却省却了一些特殊的，难以描述的，却与以往一样有尽可能多追求的咨询童话。

The global ruling class is seized with a toxic combination of status-obsession and status-insecurity. 全球统治阶级正在被一种混合的痴迷状态和不安全状态困扰，

Decision-makers also fear being swept away by one of Mr Christensen's disruptive forces.

决策者也担心被克里斯滕森先生所说的破坏性力量一扫而空，

They seek constant reassurance and reaffirmation from prestigious institutions.

他们寻求那些颇负盛名的机构来求得安慰和重申。

McKinsey knows better than almost anyone how to exploit this peculiar mindset.

麦肯锡比任何其他人都懂得如何利用这种奇特的心态，

That will guarantee the Firm a solid future, even if no one can prove that its advice actually does any good.

这将保证坚实的未来，即使没有人能证明这些咨询建议确实有什么好处。

Renewable energy in the north-west

美国西北部的可再生能源

Tilting at windmills

风能发电遇到困难

Teething troubles in the clean-energy sector

清洁能源领域中的问题开始出现

THE melting snows of spring and early summer are justly celebrated by Aaron Copland and Walt Whitman. But they are causing a lot of trouble in the Pacific north-west, as a federal power agency pushes private wind turbines off the grid in what critics call a case of favouritism towards electricity generated by federal dams.

春季夏初,冬雪融化,这正是阿隆.柯普兰的音乐和威廉.惠特曼的诗歌中所赞美的时节。但现在融化的冬雪却给太平洋西北岸地区带来了麻烦。因为一家联邦电力机构把私有企业风机发电所产生的热能并出电网，而此举被批评人士看成对联邦水电站的一次政策性偏移。

The region’s wind power companies are enraged and are petitioning t he regulators. Encouraged by politicians and their subsidies, they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past six years on a 14-fold increase in generating capacity.But this year, as an unusually large snowmelt surges into the rivers of Oregon and Washington, the wind lobby is howling about government perfidy. “You can’t trust the guy who is running the grid,” says Robert Kahn, executive director of the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition.

这一下激怒了当地的风力发电公司，他们正在向政策制定者请愿。这些公司在政客鼓动和政府津贴的诱惑下，在过去的6年间投入了数以百万美元，电力产能因此翻了14倍。但在今年，随着罕见的冬雪大量融化，涌入俄勒岗州和华盛顿州的河水流域中，风能发电的游说者

对政府的出尔反尔大诉苦水。西北及内陆电力联盟的执行经理，罗伯特.卡恩就抱怨道：“你没法相信管理供电网络的人。”

The guy in question is the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a venerable federal bureaucracy that markets power from 31 federal dams in the Columbia river basin. Thanks to monstrous chunks of concrete like Grand Coulee Dam, completed 70 years ago and still the largest hydroelectric facility in North America, the north-west gets more of its power from hydro than any other region of the United States.

卡恩所指的是邦纳维尔电力局，它是一所受人尊敬的联邦机构，管理着哥伦比亚河域盆地31座联邦水坝所发出电力的市场销售。70年前建造的大古力水坝，凭借其庞大坚固的建筑结构，至今仍为北美洲最大的水力发电站。而美国西北部水力发电供电量要比美国其它地区都多。

BPA managers say near-flood conditions in the Columbia river—and strict laws protecting the river’s endangered salmon—give the agency no choice but to disconnect the windmills as it grapples with a large power surplus. Not making electricity is not an option on the river, the BPA argues, because only a limited amount of water can be kept out of turbines and spilled over federal dams. Too much spill dissolves too much nitrogen in the river, which can kill migrating salmon. There is a particular irony in the agency’s concern about fish, since the development of the hydroelectric system is largely r esponsible for destroying the Columbia as one of the world’s great salmon highways.

BPA的管理者认为，基于哥伦比亚河几近泛滥的现状,再加上旨在保护其流域中濒临灭绝的鲑鱼的严格法案，使他们在面对电能过剩,需要消减时，只能将风力发电产生的电量并出电网，除此之外，别无它法。BPA随后解释道，并不是说非要进行水力发电不可。因为只有额定的水量能流经涡轮机组，注入水坝中。太多的溢水量使水中氮含量过高，导致游入哥伦比亚河的鲑鱼致死。BPA对于鲑鱼的担忧在人们看来，纯粹是个笑话。作为世界上最大的鲑鱼水域之一的哥伦比亚河，生态环境早已被破坏，而水力发电机组的发展要对此负很大的责任。

Be that as it may, in the early morning hours of May 18th, BPA did something it has never done before. It took all the region’s wind turbines offline for about five hours and it expec ts to continue to pull the plug on them for a few hours almost every night until well into July, when enough snow in the Cascades and northern Rockies will have melted for the excess run-off (and therefore the excess power) to subside. Until then the BPA will be giving electricity away, and paying the transmission costs of utilities willing to take it.

也许就是出于这样的考虑，在5月18日的早间，BPA采取了前所未有的行动。即：将哥伦比亚河地区所有的风力涡轮机发出的电能并出电网5小时，预期之后几乎每晚都将并出电能几小时，这一行为要持续到7月。直到卡斯克德和北落基山的融雪流过（因此产生了过多的电力）并减弱后。到那时BPA会把风力发电产生的电能免费并入其它电网，并负担公用转输所要支付的费用。

The clean-energy glut was predictable, given the tendency of snow to melt in the spring and given whopping increases in the region’s wind-generating capacity. Since 2005 wind capacity has surged from 250 megawatts to 3,500 megawatts, and is expected to double again by 2014. More effort by BPA to link this new capacity to grids in California and British Columbia could have avoided the need to idle those wind turbines, or so a number of power experts reckon.

源于春季冬雪大量融化的趋势和此地区风力发电量的大幅度增长，人们已经预计出清洁能源产出会过剩。从2005年起，风能发电量从250兆瓦激增到3500兆瓦，到2014年人们预计这一数字会在3500兆瓦的基础上再翻一倍。如果BPA花力气将风能发出的电力并入加州和不列颠哥伦比亚省的话，将有机会避免风能的浪费。一些专家也认可这种观点。

“The crime is that we have been nearsighted,” says Angus Duncan, chairman of Oregon’s Global Warming Commission. “We are not think ing as far ahead today as we did in the 1930s and 1940s, when we started building dams.”

俄勒岗州的全球气候委员会的主席，阿各斯.邓肯谈到：“出现这一憾事的原因是我们缺乏远见。在上世纪三四十年代，我们建造水坝的时候，并没有考虑到七十年后会发展成什么样子。”

Urbanisation

城镇化

Where do you live?

你生活在哪里？

Town- and country-dwellers have radically different prospects

城镇居民和农村居民的前途是截然不同

IN DAYI COUNTY, a couple of hours’ drive down a motorway from the city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, Chinese tourists stroll through the meandering courtyards of a rural mansion. In the 1950s, soon after Mao seized power, the mansion was turned into a museum, intended as a showcase of evil. It once belonged to Liu Wencai, a landowner supposedly notorious for ill-treating his tenant farmers. Liu embodied a class despised by Mao, who came to power on the back of a promise to give land back to the peasants.

在大邑县，距离四川省府成都市数小时车程的一个县城里，中国游客漫步于一家乡间宅所那曲折的庭院里。在1950年代，在毛泽东掌权后不久，这栋宅所被辟为了一家博物馆，以作为罪恶的展品。它曾一度归属为刘文彩（Liu Wencai），作为地主，刘文彩因被断定虐待他自己的长工而臭名昭著。刘文彩代表了为毛泽东所鄙视的那样一个阶级。而毛泽东在掌权后，推动了将土地交还给农民的这样一个承诺的兑现。

In its Maoist heyday the museum was a place of pilgrimage. Red Guards swarmed there for ritual denunciations of Liu and his ilk. A high point of their visit was a trip to the “water dungeon”, a room with several inches of water covering the floor where Liu had allegedly kept disobedient farmers. Another was a series of life-size sculptures of peasants and their vicious oppressors. A politically disfavoured curator from Beijing’s Forbidden City who happened to look like Liu was forced to stand next to the sculptures as a “living Liu Wencai” so that visitors could shout and (though not strictly permitted) spit at him, according to Geremie Barmé of Australian National University.

在毛泽东思想的全盛期，这个博物馆就是个圣地。红卫兵扫荡了这里，为的就是仪式性的宣示刘文彩和他的同类。他们的串联的一个高潮是参观“水龙”，即刘文彩非法拘禁不守规矩的长工的地方：一间数尺深的水漫过地面的房间。而另外一个高潮是，一套由长工和他们恶毒的压迫者组成的真人大小的雕塑。据澳洲大学的Geremie Barmé讲，一位来自北京紫禁城的，在政治上的失宠的馆长，因碰巧长得像刘文彩而被作为“活刘文彩”强迫站在这些个雕塑边上，以让参观者能够对着他大声喊叫，大吐口水（尽管严格的说，并没有得到这样的允许）。

The sculptures are still there, but in recent years a wave of revisionism has been sweeping across Dayi. Local officials were already having second thoughts by the early 1980s. But it was a book reassessing Liu’s life published by an outspoken journalist in 1999 that finally convinced many

that the man was really not that bad. His water dungeon was a government fabrication, the museum now points out. He spent a lot of money on local schools and paid for a road to be built from Chengdu to Dayi. Last year a grandson organised a get-together in Dayi for the extended Liu clan, whose members would once have been terrified of revealing their ties. More than 1,000 turned up.

那些雕塑还在，但是近年来的一波回头客在大邑县境内来了次旧地重游。当地官员在1980

年代就已经有了另外一种想法。在1999年，一本由一位率性直言（大嘴巴）的记者出版的一本重估刘文彩的人生的书最终证实了刘文彩这个人也并没有（上面写的）那么坏得透顶。现在的博物馆方面指出到，他的“水龙”是政府捏造的。刘文彩为当地学校花费了大量钱财，出资相互修建从成都到大邑县的公路。去年，刘文彩的一位重孙为了延续刘氏的香火，在大邑县组织了一次大团聚。这些人员曾一度对于自己身份的泄露而倍感恐惧，而那次团聚的出场人数超过1000人。

The slaughter of many thousands of landlords (not including Liu, who died of natural causes) by officials and vengeful peasants shortly after the communist takeover resulted in profound changes

in the system of rural land ownership. Peasants got the land Mao promised them, but only briefly.

In the late 1950s the party took it back again and forced farmers into collectively owned “people’s communes”. The legacy of that disastrous decision, which contributed to a famine that left tens of millions dead, still weighs heavily on rural China. So too does a decision to confer hereditary status on peasants, who would be all but barred from cities to stop them rushing in to find work.

在共产党取得政权之后的极短时间里，政府官员和仇恨的农民就屠杀了数以千万计的地主（不包括刘文彩，他死于自然原因），这导致了农村土地所有权体制的深刻变化。农民正如毛主席保证的那样夺取了土地，但仅仅是短暂的取得。在1950年代晚期，党又把土地收了回来，并强制农民加入集体所有的“人民公社”。这一灾难性的决策遗留下的祸害之处就是，

招来了一场对中国农村仍然造孽深重的数以千万人死亡的饥荒。一个对只会被城市所阻止的，为了寻找工作而涌入城市的农民的世代相传的权利状态进行转变的决策，只会带来同样（的结果）。

The curse of the hukou

户口的诅咒

The hukou system, as this one-time apartheid is commonly known, applied to urban as well as

rural dwellers, but peasants got a worse deal because they received hardly any welfare benefits,

and job prospects in the countryside were dismal. The system has been much eroded since the

Mao era because of the need for cheap labour to fuel China’s manufacturing boom. But its lingering impact, combined with the still collective ownership of rural land, will retard China’s urbanisation in the years ahead just when the country is most in need of its consumption-boosting benefits. Two researchers from China’s finance ministry, Chen Xiaoqiang and Liu Ling, wrote in March that it was time to start returning land to the peasants, both to spur consumption and to help defuse growing rural unrest. Most officials dare not say this so bluntly, but they admit that change

is needed.

户口体制，这个为人所共知的一度起着隔离（城乡居民）体制，被同样施加于城市和农村居民身上。但农民的被更加恶劣的对待，因为他们几无福利，且在乡下的工作前途简直是凄惨。这一体制自毛泽东时代起就因为对推动制造业繁荣的廉价劳动力的需要而一步步的受到侵蚀。但是其绵延的影响，与农村土地仍在实施的集体所有制相结合，将会在接下来的几年里，在这个国家最为急切需要的消费拉动效益上拖累中国的城镇化。3月，中国财政部的两位研究员Chen Xiaoqiang和Liu Ling撰文指出，是该开始向农民归还土地的时候了，这样既可

以刺激消费，又可以帮助消解农村持续增长的动荡。大多数政府官员并不敢在此事上如此直抒胸臆，但是他们承认变革是必需的。

In 2007 Chengdu, and Chongqing to its south-east, were given licence to experiment. The

pri nciple of collective ownership could not be changed, but farmers’ rights could be clarified and rural land markets of sorts could be established. In Chengdu, which is responsible for a large rural area including Dayi county, officials spoke of initiating a “new land reform” (hinting at similarities to the great land reform that divvied up the estate of landlord Liu). They began a drive to ensure that farmers at last got long-promised certificates showing the exact boundaries of their fields and housing as well as confirming their rights to use them (farmland is subject to a 30-year renewable contract).

2007年时，成都和位于其东南方向的重庆被授予进行探索实践的资质。集体所有制的根本

原则不能动摇，但是农民的权益可以进行明确，各种类别的农村土地市场也可以建立起来。对包括大邑县在内的大片的农村地区负责的成都市的官方人员都在谈论对“新土改”的（暗示在一定程度上类似于划分刘地主的田产）尝试。他们开始了一轮保证农民最终能有显示他们的田产和房产的精确边界的得到长期保证的证明，同时也确认农民的使用它们的权利（农田承包合同30年不变。）

Without such documents a market could not take off. Regulations dating back at least to 1997

have obliged officials to issue them. But Landesa, an American NGO, says a survey it conducted