Editor's note: Rob Brooks is Professor of Evolution and Director of the Evolution & Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He studies the evolution of sexual behavior in humans and other animals. His first book, Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World recently won the Queensland Literary Award for Science Writing.
罗伯·布鲁克斯是新南威尔士大学（悉尼，澳大利亚）进化论学的教授以及生物进化和生态研究中心的主任。他主要研究人类及其他动物的性行为进化。他的第一本书《性，基因和摇滚：进化塑造现代世界》最近获得昆士兰文学奖科学写作奖项。
Sydney (CNN) -- In the mid-19th Century, two devastating floods of the Yellow River, and the famine that followed, ravaged northeastern China.
悉尼（CNN）： 20世纪中期，黄河的两次泛滥以及随后的饥荒肆虐中国东北地区。
Outlaw bands, known as nien, attracted young men in unprecedented numbers, aggregating into militias that wrought chaos on the troops and infrastructure of the ruling Qing. Although this Nien Rebellion and the larger Taiping rebellion in the South were eventually crushed, they devastated the Chinese economy and contributed to the ending of the Qing dynasty.
起义军，即捻军，吸引了数目空前的青年男子聚集在一起形成民兵组织，给清王朝的军队和基础设施带来了巨大的灾难。虽然捻军以及南方规模更大的太平起义运动最终被镇压，然而他们还是给中国经济带来了沉重的打击，导致了清王朝的覆灭。
According to political scientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer, widespread female infanticide during the famine meant that as many as one quarter of young men in the region were "bare branches" -- as the Chinese expression goes -- unlikely ever to bear fruit. The Nien rebellion, they argued, was propelled by these surplus young men who had so few other prospects.
据政治科学家瓦莱丽·哈德逊和安德烈·邓波尔，在饥荒期间，杀害女婴现象普遍，这就意味在这一地区四分之一的青年男子都是“光棍”——正如汉语表达那样，他们找不到配偶。他们认为捻军起义因这些过剩的、娶不到老婆的青年男子而愈演愈烈。
This story of the Nien Rebellion foreshadows one of the biggest issues that China will face in coming decades: the dramatic excess of young men.
捻军起义这一事件预示了中国在随后的几十年中将要面临的重大问题：青年男子过剩。
A long history of son preference, particularly among the Han majority, has led to female infanticide and the neglect of daughters in some parts of China. But in recent decades, the spread of cheap ultrasound (enabling sex-determination in early-mid pregnancy) and easy access to abortion courtesy of the government's one-child policy, has led to the widespread abortion of female fetuses.
长久以来特别是在汉族中存在的偏爱儿子的观点，导致了一些地区出现杀害女婴和歧视女儿的现象。但最近这些年，随着超声波（能够在妊娠早中期判断胎儿的性别）价格下降、日益普及，再加上政府的独生子女政策允许堕胎，对女性胎儿选择性流产的现象越来越广泛。因此，男性将比女性多出将近三千万人。到2020年，这多出的三千万男性将成年并开始择偶。
Young men with poor prospects of ever starting a family spell danger to themselves and to their societies. Over millions of years of evolution, large numbers of women and even larger numbers of men left no offspring at all. Yet everyone alive today descends from ancestors who managed to avoid that fate. Our male ancestors were the ones who strove most frantically for status and the respect of their peers, and who won the chance to mate.
捻军起义时期的性别比例失衡与目前的相比，简直是小巫见大巫。现在所产生的影响也将更具灾难性。没有成家希望的青年男子不仅给他们自己，也给社会带来危险。在百万年的进化过程中，许多的女子和更多的男子都没有后代。但是，今天存活的每个人都是当时成功配对的人们的后代。我们的男性祖先都是那些奋力争夺地位，赢取同伴尊重，最终获得配对机会的男子。
As a result, young men are hair-trigger sensitive to their circumstances, and when the number of men who will never find a mate rises, so does the intensity of the striving. Young men discount their futures and take ridiculous risks in order to improve their prospects. They also become more violent, rising more readily to perceived slights and insults, and starting more fights -- often over trivial issues. These are the triggers for most man-on-man assaults and homicides.
因此，现在的青年男子对他们的现状极其敏感，保持着一触即发的状态。当找不到配偶的男子数量上升时，争斗也将愈加激烈。年轻男子看不到未来，愚蠢地冒险来提高配对的可能性。他们也会变得更加暴力，一感觉受到怠慢或侮辱就怒发冲冠，还常常对于一些小事大打出手。这些都是男人间相互袭击和谋杀的导火线。
Many factors contribute to the number of men who will never find a mate. Economic inequality, for one, leaves a great many poor young men unable to attract a wife. When a society allows powerful men to take several wives, too few women remain for many poor men to take even a single wife. But most dramatically of all, male-biased sex ratios consign the excess men to never having a family of their own.
导致这些男子找不到伴侣的因素很多。诸如经济不平等，致使许多年轻的贫困的男子娶不到老婆。当社会允许富有权利的男子娶好几个老婆时，就不会有多少女子愿意嫁给那些贫穷的男子，即使是做他唯一的妻子。但最引人注目的是，男性比例偏重使过剩的男子永远不能组建自己的家庭。
Under each of these scenarios, large numbers of young men competing for dominance elevate local rates of violence, homicide and lawlessness. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson's studies show that local income inequality can explain variation in homicide rates on a number of scales: from Chicago neighborhoods to American States and Canadian provinces.
在这些情况下，许多年轻男子为赢得优势而竞争，从而导致了地方暴力、谋杀和违法行为的发生率上升。马丁·黛莉和马格·威尔森夫的研究表明，地方收入的不平等性是谋杀率大幅变动的原因：从芝加哥地区到美国各州再到加拿大各区。
Throughout history, a surplus of young men often heralded violence. The American frontier earned its "Wild West" reputation for lawlessness because its towns overflowed with men, yet marriageable women were vanishingly rare. In The Chivalrous Society, historian Georges Duby argued that European expansionism, from the Crusades to colonialism, was fueled by a surplus of ambitious and aggressive young men with otherwise poor reproductive prospects.
纵观历史，年轻男子数量过多常常就会引发暴力。美国边境因违法事件频频而得名“狂野的西部”，究其原因，也是由于那里男子过多，但可作为结婚对象的女子却很少。历史学家乔治斯·杜比在《骑士社会》中称，欧洲的扩张，从十字军东征到殖民主义，都是由一群过剩的男子所推动的，他们雄心勃勃、积极进取，却很难找到配偶。
China is already feeling the effects of so many bare branches. The economist Lena Edlund estimates that every one percent increase in the sex ratio results in a six percent increase in the rates of violent and property crime. In addition, the parts of China with the most male-biased sex ratios are experiencing a variety of other maladies, all tied to the presence of too many young men. Gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, kidnapping and trafficking of women are rising steeply in China.
中国目前已察觉数量庞大的“光棍”们所产生的影响。经济学家莉娜·埃德隆德估测：性别比例每增长一个百分点，就会导致暴力和财产犯罪率增长六个百分点。除此之外，在中国性别比例最为失衡的地区，将会产生其他各种同青年男子数量过多相关的弊病。在中国，赌博、酗酒、吸毒以及绑架贩卖妇女的发生率急剧上升。
The bare branch problem will be compounded as income inequality rises. China's Gini coefficient of income inequality has risen from less than 0.3, 25 years ago, to almost 0.5 today. On the Gini scale, 0 represents perfect equality while a score of 1 represents complete inequality.
随着收入不平等性的加剧，光棍问题也将变得复杂。中国的基尼系数从25年前的不到0.3，增长到现在的将近0.5。基尼系数为0时表示完全平等，基尼系数为1时表示彻底不平等。
But just as urgently, China needs creative large-scale solutions to the problems that unprecedented cohorts of bare branches will cause as they come of age over the next two decades. Those millions of disaffected young men will not only present a danger to themselves, but those living alongside them. And, as Hudson and den Boer have been arguing for some time, the bare branches will also make perfect fodder for political agitation, fundamentalism and possibly terrorism.
中国要仿效韩国消除性别歧视和性别选择堕胎的急迫性再夸张也不为过。但是中国更亟需采取富有创造性的、大型的解决方法，来应对未来二十年中这数目空前的光棍们在达到法定结婚年龄时所产生的问题。这些上百万的具有叛逆精神的年轻男子们不仅仅会对自身，更会对其周边的人们造成危害。正如哈德逊和邓波尔长期以来所持的观点，这些光棍将会滋养政治动乱、原教旨主义和潜在的恐怖主义。
|
