经济学人下载:人口即命运? (2)

Leaning against this force, however, is migration. Right now, the richest places are not the most populous.
但扭转这股力量的因素是移民。现在，最富有的地方并非那些人口众多的国家。

Should it become relatively easy to migrate, people will move from countries that are populous but poor to others that are rich.
如果移民变得相对容易，人们将从人口众多但却贫困的国家迁至富裕的国家。

As migration swells the population of rich places, their long-run dominance is assured because of the link between population size and innovation.
随着移民涌入富裕国家，由于人口规模和创新之间的关系，他们的长期优势得到了保证。

But if there is very little migration, then the populous but poor countries will out-innovate the small but rich ones,
但如果移民很少，那么人口众多但贫穷的国家将在创新方面超过那些人口较少但却富裕的国家，

and make their way up the income league table. The process is not quick; the authors reckon that convergence takes about 400 years.
并让他们爬上收入排行榜。这个过程并不快；作者们认为这种趋同需要约400年。

In practice, rich places tend not to allow much migration from poor ones.
实际上，富裕国家不会允许过多贫困国家的移民。

That could change, but assuming that it does not, the model delivers a striking forecast: half a millennium from now,
这一点可能会改变，但假设其不改变，那么这一模型传递出了一个惊人的预测：自现在起半个世纪后，

Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will have become great engines of productivity.
亚洲和撒哈拉以南的非洲将成为巨大的生产力引擎。

Stranger things have happened. A millennium ago real output per person was significantly higher in China than in Britain.
更加奇怪的事情发生了。一千年前，中国的人均实际产出明显高于英国。

To predict that a European backwater would lead the world into the most transformative economic epoch in history would have seemed like madness.
要预测欧洲停滞不前的状态将引领世界走向历史上最具变革性的经济时代似乎很疯狂。

Over very long time horizons the world's poorest places can indeed become the world's richest, even if it does not happen often.
在很长一段时间内，世界最贫穷的国家确实可以成为世界最富有的国家，虽然这种情况不常发生。

Still, if Britain did not have the upper hand over China 1,000 years ago, it did soon after, at least in terms of real output per person.
尽管如此，如果英国没有在一千年前占得中国上风，那么在不久后也会如此，至少在人均实际产出上是如此。

By 1400 incomes in Britain were meaningfully larger than in China (and higher still in the Netherlands and Italy),
到1400年，英国收入明显大于中国（且仍比荷兰和意大利高），

according to work by Stephen Broadberry of Oxford University,
牛津大学的斯蒂芬·布劳德伯利

Hanhui Guan of Peking University and David Daokui Li of Tsinghua University.
北京大学的管汉晖以及清华大学的李稻葵的研究说如是。

By 1700 the diverging trajectories of China and north-west Europe were clear
到1700年，中国和欧洲西北部的分叉轨迹很明显

(though it was anything but obvious just how much further apart they would become).
（虽然其只是表明两者将会相隔多远）。

In other words, population over the past millennium has not been destiny.
换言之，在过去一千年中，人口并不是命运。

If China's and India's masses did not raise them to prosperity during the past 600 years, what reason is there to believe the future will be different?
如果在过去600年里，中国和印度的人口并没有带领两国走向繁荣，那还有什么理由相信未来会有所不同呢？