1 . Last Thursday, the French Senate passed a digital services tax, which would impose an entirely new tax on large multinationals that provide digital services to consumers or users in France. Digital services include everything from providing a platform for selling goods and services online to targeting advertising based on user data, and the tax applies to gross revenue from such services. Many French politicians and media outlets have referred 10 this as a "GAFA tax", meaning that it is designed to apply primarily to companies such as Google, Apple. Facebook and Amazon - in other words, multinational tech companies based in the United States.

The digital services lax now awaits the signature of President Emmanuel Macron, who has expressed support for the measure, and it could go into effect within the next few weeks. But it has already sparked significant controversy, with the United States trade representative opening an investigation into whether the tax discriminates against American companies, which in turn could lead to trade sanctions against France.

The French tax is not just a unilateral move by one country in need of revenue. Instead, the digital services tax is part of a much larger trend, with countries over the past few years proposing or putting in place an alphabet soup of new international lax provisions. These have included Britain's DPT (diverted profits lax), Australia's MAAL (multinational anti-avoidance law), and India's SEP (significant economic presence), to name but a few. At the same time, the European Union, Spain, Britain and several other countries have all seriously contemplated digital services taxes.

These unilateral developments differ in their specifics, but they are all designed to tax multinationals on income and revenue that countries believe they should have a right to tax, even if international tax rules do not grant them that right. In other words, they all share a view that the international tax system has failed to keep up with the current economy.

In response to these many unilateral measures, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently working with 131 countries to reach a consensus by the end of 2020 on an international solution.

Both France and the United States are involved in the organizations' work, but France's digital services tax and the American response raise questions about what the future holds for the international tax system.

France's planned tax is a clear warning: Unless a broad consensus can be reached on reforming the international tax system, other nations are likely to follow suit, and American companies will face a cascade of different taxes from dozens of nations that will prove burdensome and costly.

1. The French Senate has passed a bill to ________.

A．regulate digital services platforms	B．protect French companies' interest
C．impose a duty on tech multinationals	D．curb the influence of digital technology

2. It can be learned from Paragraph 2 that the digital services tax ________.

A．may trigger countermeasures against France

B．is apt to arouse criticism at home and abroad

C．aims to ease international trade tensions

D．will prompt the tech giants 10 quit France

3. The countries adopting the unilateral measures share the opinion that ________.

A．redistribution of tech giants' revenue must be ensured

B．the current international tax system needs upgrading

C．tech multinationals' monopoly should be prevented

D．all countries ought to enjoy equal taxing rights

4. What can we infer from the passage?

A．OECD's current work on the international tax system has uncertain prospects.

B．France's digital services tax mirror in detail Britain's DPT. Australia's MAAL and India's SEP.

C．France's digital services tax is targeted on such companies as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon and their users.

D．Other nations are likely to follow the example of France and make a joint effort to impose taxes on American multinationals.

2 . Economists have long tried to calculate the value of unpaid housework. In terms of inputs and outputs, the_______of a stay-at-home parent can easily be overlooked, hidden in the _______ of freshly ironed shirts and the contents of a full belly. The courts, too, have tried their hand at putting a price on housework.

Last month China was shocked when a court ordered a man to pay his wife $7,700 for housework during their live-year marriage. The wife, known as Ms Wang, told a judge in Beijing that she "looked after the child and managed the household _______ while her husband did not care about or participate in any other household affairs besides going to work". On average, Chinese women spend four hours a day on housework, compared with about an hour and a half for men.

The court ruling was widely _______. But on Weibo many users were disappointed with the amount _______ to Ms Wang. One user commented: "Women should never be stay-at-home wives. When you divorce, you are left with nothing whatsoever." The government has adopted policies aimed at advancing co-parenting and protecting women's rights. Most provinces, for example, have in recent years introduced _______ leave for new fathers. But many people argue that it is too short—an average of just two weeks—to _______ new mothers, who receive a minimum of 98 days, from child care.

In the West, where the starting principle is an equal split of the couple's assets on divorce, claims for extra compensation are _______ by the courts. Housework is seen as equivalent to financial contributions, so neither spouse _______ financially by doing more cooking and ironing than their partner.

In Britain, the concept of compensation fell out of use for over a decade before resurfacing in 2020, bringing the question of pay for housework into the ________. Last year a woman was compensated and received £400,000 ($520,000) for giving up her legal career to focus on the family. When her marriage broke down and the couple's assets were divided, she asked for an additional sum to ________ the sacrifice she had made by cutting her career short. The judges agreed, but only because she was already a high earner and could prove she had been on track to become one of her firm's leading money makers. She was compensated not for the housework, but her forgone legal career. So Ms Wang's claim for extra compensation would probably have failed anywhere in Europe. But she may never have felt the need to make it ________.

Many women have no option but to leave the workforce when they start a family—the cost of child care might ________ the benefits of a second salary, particularly if working hours and earnings are reduced to ________ family responsibilities. Legal and financial recognition of unpaid domestic work would change this calculation. But it would be simpler (and fairer) to share domestic burdens more evenly. More important than writing new rules about compensation for housework is strengthening existing ones that ________ shared parental leave. With both spouses more involved in parenting, family responsibilities can be shared. Why wait until the divorce to quibble over who did the housework?

1.

A．accusations

B．ambitions

C．contributions

D．exclamations

2.

A．fabrics

B．folds

C．packages

D．pockets

3.

A．appliances

B．chores

C．conflicts

D．expenses

4.

A．approved

B．celebrated

C．circulated

D．questioned

5.

A．awarded

B．channeled

C．furnished

D．transferred

6.

A．additional

B．compulsory

C．free

D．paid

7.

A．free

B．help

C．relieve

D．suspend

8.

A．considered

B．encouraged

C．favored

D．rejected

9.

A．gives out

B．loses out

C．misses out

D．wears out

10.

A．forum

B．horizon

C．lens

D．spotlight

11.

A．admit

B．recall

C．reflect

D．signal

12.

A．at first glance

B．for the first time

C．first of all

D．in the first place

13.

A．counter

B．eliminate

C．outweigh

D．replace

14.

A．accommodate

B．escape

C．fortify

D．shift

15.

A．check

B．distinguish

C．promote

D．publicize

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. documenting     B. resigned   C. viral     D. sensation     E. rooted   F. rarely G. appeal       H. reassured   I. fixed   J. waking     K. marvelously

A Chinese "Auntie" Went on a Solo Road Trip. Now, She's a Feminist Icon

SuMin, a 56-year-old retiree from Henan province in central China, has never been happier. "I've been a wife, a mother and a grandmother," Su said. "I came out this time to find myself."

After fulfilling her family's expectations of dutiful Chinese womanhood, Su is embracing a new identity: fearless road-tripper and internet     1    . For six months, she has been on a solo drive across China,     2     her journey for more than 1.35 million followers across several social media platforms.

Her main     3     is not the scenic vistas she captures, although those are plentiful. It is the intimate revelations she mixes in with them, about her abusive marriage, dissatisfaction with domestic life and newfound freedom. Her blunt but vulnerable demeanor has made Su— a former factory worker with a high school education — an accidental feminist icon of a sort     4     seen in China.

Her unexpected popularity speaks to the collision of two major forces in Chinese society: the rapid spread of the internet and a flourishing awareness of gender equality in a country where traditional gender roles are still deeply     5    , especially among older generations.

Still, Su said, she never considered a divorce, worried about a social stigma that is still pervasive in much of China. She     6     herself to her life at home. Then, in late 2019, she came across a video online of someone introducing their camping gear while on a solo road trip. She remembered her childhood dream of driving — the freedom and comfort it had represented. Soon, she made up her mind to embark on a trip of her own. Her family was resistant. Su     7     her daughter that she would be safe. She ignored her husband, who she said mocked her.

On September 24, she     8     her tent to the top of the car, packed a mini-fridge and rice cooker, and set off from her home in the city of Zhengzhou. She posted video updates as she drove, and in October, one of them went     9     on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok.

In her videos, she marvelled at her newfound freedom. She could drive as fast as she wanted, brake as hard as she liked. Still, Su blushes when asked about her new fame. She also says she is not yet qualified to claim the mantle of feminist. "It took me so many years to realize that I had to live for myself." She paused: "It's something I'm     10     up to, not something that I just am."

4 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Human memory is notoriously (众所周知地) unreliable. Even people with the sharpest facial recognition skills can only remember so much.

It’s tough to quantify how good a person is     1     remembering. No one really knows how many different faces someone can recall, for example, but various estimates tend to hover in the thousands – based on the number of acquaintances a person     2     have.

Machines aren’t limited this way. Give the right computer a massive database of faces, and it can process what it sees – then recognize a face it     3     (tell) to find – with remarkable speed and precision. This skill is     4     supports the enormous promise of facial-recognition software in the 21^st century. It is also what makes contemporary surveillance (监控) systems so scary.

The thing is, machines still have limitations when it comes to facial recognition. And scientists are only just beginning to understand what those constraints are.     5     (figure) out how computers are struggling, researchers at the University of Washington created a massive database of faces – they call it MegaFace – and     6     (test) a variety of facial-recognition algorithms(算法) as they scales up in complexity. The idea was to test the machines on a database that included up to 1 million different images of nearly 7,000 different people – and not just a large database     7     (feature) a relatively small number of different faces, more consistent with what’s been used in other research.

As the databases grew, machine accuracy dipped across the board. Algorithms     8     were right 95% of the time when they were dealing with a 13,000-image database, for example, were accurate about 70% of the time when     9     (face) with 1 million images. That’s still pretty good, says one of the researchers, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. “Much better than we expected,” she said,

Machines also had difficulty adjusting for people who look a lot alike –either doppelgangers (长相极相似的人), whom the machine would have trouble       10     (identify) as two separate people, or the same person who appeared in different photos at different ages or in different lighting, whom the machine would incorrectly view as separate people.

5 . The World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed in January of 1995. It deals with the regulation of international trade.     1     Although the key focus is on trade agreements themselves, there are many ways in which it works to enhance the welfare of the international community at large.

Here we will focus on two of those aspects: doing business internationally and raising living standards worldwide. Before the WTO, countries relied on independent partnerships to accomplish trade. Doing trade was often expensive, as tariffs were high. With one place for all of these countries to meet, and discuss new trade deals together, it is easier for them to make trade deals that are advantageous for all parties.     2     When employees work only from home, they will need to communicate a lot with their coworkers to accomplish something. But when they all work in the same building, holding regular meetings, it becomes much faster and easier to discuss things.

How does the WTO raise the standard of living globally? In modern life, we rely heavily on trade to have the things we need and want. For example, China exports a lot of manufactured items to many countries. These frequent international transactions can also raise living standards by introducing new jobs to different countries. Without international business and trade, there would be far fewer jobs in all countries.     3     In addition, because of the WTO being an international organization, they must meet international standards for health and environmental protection.

There are many benefits of being in the WTO. However, sometimes it leads to international disputes.     4     Though globalization can be a good thing, it can sometimes lead to loss of local culture. In addition, sometimes the WTO requirements are too difficult for developing nations to meet.

A．It is similar to having an office to accomplish work.

B．With jobs, citizens are able to earn income and have a better life.

C．The WTO also seeks to increase awareness of unity and cooperation.

D．It currently has over 160 participating members.

E．The functions of the WTO are constantly changing and developing.

F．Some have accused the WTO of promoting too much globalization.

6 . “Chinese tourists have overtaken (超过) Germans as the world’s biggest-spending travelers after a decade of rapid growth in the number of Chinese vacationing abroad,” the United Nations World Tourism Organization said.

Chinese tourists, known for travelling in organized tours and ________ luxury fashion abroad, spent $102 billion on foreign trips last year, 41 percent more than the year before, ________ deep-pocketed travelers from Germany and the United States.

Tourists from other fast-developing economies with a growing middle class, such as Russia and Brazil, also ________ spending in 2012. In decline-hit Europe, however, French and Italian tourists controlled their holiday ________.

“The impressive growth of tourism spending from China and Russia reflects the ________ into the tourism market of more middle classes from these countries,” said Taleb Rifai, secretary-general of the UN World Tourism Organization, which is based in Madrid.

The German Travel Association said it was to be expected that the Chinese tourists would ________ overtake Germans in spending, given that the country had more ________ than North America, Russia, and Europe put together.

“But that they have overtaken us already is ________,” said Juergen Buechy, president of the German Travel Association.

“The Chinese make more long-distance trips than Germans, who ________ go to Mediterranean (地中海) destinations, meaning that the ________ vacation spending per holiday was greater,” he added.

China is the world’s fastest-growing tourist-source market, ________ higher spendable incomes in the world’s second-largest economy and looser foreign travel restrictions.

Chinese tourists made 83 million ________ trips in 2012, compared with 10 million in 2000.

“Hotels, tour companies, restaurants and even taxi drivers will need to improve ________ of Chinese cooking, culture and language if they are to ________ them away from favourite destinations such as Thailand and the Maldives,” European tourism officials have said.

Other countries in the top 10 posted growth in travel spending. ________, only Russia came close to China’s huge growth, with a 32 percent increase in vacation budgets (预算).

1.

A．starting

B．buying

C．showing

D．designing

2.

A．costing

B．passing

C．beating

D．controlling

3.

A．increased

B．limited

C．postponed

D．checked

4.

A．lengths

B．budgets

C．destinations

D．plans

5.

A．inquiry

B．investigation

C．research

D．entry

6.

A．eventually

B．secretly

C．suddenly

D．normally

7.

A．businessmen

B．housewives

C．residents

D．immigrants

8.

A．exciting

B．frightening

C．amazing

D．interesting

9.

A．usually

B．reluctantly

C．purposefully

D．ideally

10.

A．public

B．additional

C．free

D．average

11.

A．in spite of

B．thanks to

C．except for

D．in addition to

12.

A．family

B．business

C．exploratory

D．foreign

13.

A．knowledge

B．appreciation

C．criticism

D．ability

14.

A．tear

B．attract

C．drive

D．cheat

15.

A．Otherwise

B．Therefore

C．Besides

D．However

7 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. efficiently	B. leading	C. working	D. attracted	AB. travelling	AC. managed
AD. talented	BC. opportunities	BD. competition	CD. business	ABC. measure

New York City and Shanghai

New York City is always thought of as the financial capital of the world. However, there is     1    . London has been challenging this, and there is an emerging challenger from the east, the city of Shanghai. Shanghai has become the base for many international and     2     Chinese companies. In fact, Shanghai has been called the New York of the East. One thing that is vibrant (充满活力的) in both cities is the strong sense of a     3     environment.

New York is famous for its financial market on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Index (道琼斯指数) is the measure used to record how stocks and shares in companies are rising or falling in value. It is also famous for its international business network. New York financial service companies have a huge number of     4     people who can make decisions quickly, with profit as the main focus. Shanghai, like New York, has also     5     the best of the talent, but from Asia. Many leading companies are also establishing their Asian regional headquarters in Shanghai. The main    6     of the stock market’s rise and fall in China is the Shanghai Composite Index (上证综合指数).

For people     7     in these cities, the main forms of transport are subways and bus networks. Shanghai’s subway system is much newer than New York’s, but for both cities, good transportation is the key to keeping them as financial centers. The world of finance demands that people are on time and can travel     8     from meeting to meeting.

When it comes to business culture though, there are many differences. In China,     9     are often based on long-term relationships which have grown over a period of time. However, modern trading and investment often requires quick decisions, so this is a difference that has to be    10    . In New York, business relationships are often based on similar interests and investments.

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank. Write your answers on the answer sheet.

American Indians

When you think of a typical American, whom do you picture? A pretty white American like Taylor Swift? Or a handsome black American like Barack Obama or basketball star Kobe Bryant? In fact, there was a time when the average American looked like     1     of these people.

Back in the year 1500, the average American was a brown-skinned hunter-gatherer who probably rode a horse and wore clothing     2     (make) from animal skins. Today, these people—who tend to be connected with their individual tribes (部落) such as Iriquos, Apache and Navajo—are referred to     3     “Native Americans”,   “American Indians” or simply “Indians”.

You     4     say that you have never even heard of American Indians. That’s because there aren’t very many left.     5     (settle) in North America, the settlers from Europe were involved in bitter conflict with the native peoples. After the Revolutionary War, conflicts with natives continued as the states were created     6     would later make up the US. American Indians were treated as a military “enemy”     7     1924, when the few Indians still alive at that point     8     (award) US citizenship.

    9     the story of the American Indians has been a sad one, these people’s legacies (遗产) are still felt every day in the US. There are many US geographical names     10     (come) from Indian languages and numerous successful academics and other important US leaders descended (是……的后裔) from Indians.

9 . The Best Language for Math

What’s the best language for learning math? Hint: You’re not reading it.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean use simpler number words and express math concepts more clearly than English. The language gap is drawing growing attention as confusing English number words have been linked in several studies to weaker counting and arithmetic skill in children in English-speaking countries.

    1     Among the researchers are Karen Fuson, a professor in the School of Education at Northwestern University, and Li Yeping, an expert on Chinese math education at Texas A&M University.

Chinese has just nine number words, while English has more than two dozen. The trouble starts at “11”. English has a unique word for the number, while Chinese (as well as Japanese and Korean, among other languages) have words that can be translated as “ten-one” – spoken with the “ten” first.     2    

English number words over 10 don’t as clearly label place values. Number words for the teens reverse the order of the ones and “teens”, making it easy for children to confuse, say, 17 with 71. As a result, children working with English number words have a harder time doing multi-digit addition and subtraction (减法)     3    

It also feels more natural for Chinese speakers than for English speakers to use the “make-a-ten” addition and subtraction strategy. When adding two numbers, students break down the numbers into parts and regroup them into tens and ones. For instance, 9 plus 5 becomes 9 plus 1 plus 4.     4    Many teachers in America have increased instruction in the make-a-ten method and called for first-graders to use it to add and subtract.

Now, you should feel lucky that you are learning math in China. Thanks to your mother tongue, all math problems just come less confusing and difficult to you!

A．So it’s not easy for English speakers to label place values clearly.

B．The additional mental steps needed to solve problems cause more errors.

C．Differences between Chinese and English, in particular, have been studied for decades.

D．This method is a powerful tool for solving more advanced multi-digit addition and subtraction problems.

E．Different languages indicate different ways of thinking, causing people to solve math problems differently.

F．That makes it easier for children to understand the place value as well as making it clear that the number system is based on units of 10.

10 . One of the roles of the Nobel Prize for literature is to shine a light on someone who has been less visible than they deserve. That role was _______ this year in the announcement of Abdulrazak Gurnah as winner.

Unlike previous popular recipients living in Britain, he is not a _______. He could, as he said after the announcement, have reached more readers, but his publications _______ to grant him that. His publisher felt sorry for the fact that he “is one of the greatest living African writers; yet no one has ever _______ him,” but with this he did not agree: “I didn’t think I was ignored.”

There is a(n) _______ , here, that has to do with who is doing the looking, and what counts as officially being noticed. There is also a point of _______: calling Gurnah an African writer. In fact, while that seems to broaden horizons, it narrows and distances what he is doing. Gurnah was born in Zanzibar, and left for Britain when he was 18, _______ regional conflicts for what he hoped would be calmer waters, which turned out to be stronger dark current. He has lived in Britain ever since.

He began and stuck to writing to _______, to himself, of the shock -- of racism, rejection, poverty and loneliness. His ten novels return to it _______, which begins in 1996’s Admiring Silence. His work exists because of Britain as well as Zanzibar; it may ________ both or wholly neither. It arrives out of a(n) ________ of English literature (Gurnah is professor of literature at the University of Kent), and his first language, the rhythms and stories of Islam.

________, many of the UK's thirteen Nobel-winning writers were born elsewhere as by 2019, 14% of the UK’s population were born abroad. People might also be astonished at how many of those countries were once part of the British empire. Gurnah has spoken of how much of the world is still processing the wounds that colonialism ________, especially the experience of “losing your place in the world”-- where place is not just ________, but also belonging, status and culture.

In this sense, Gurnah’s work, which ________ those who might not have been remembered in history--shopkeeper, homemakers, students and refugees, could not be more British. But, more importantly, it could not be more universal.

1.

A．assumed

B．fulfilled

C．interpreted

D．handled

2.

A．household name

B．black horse

C．new face

D．walking dictionary

3.

A．demanded

B．tended

C．qualified

D．failed

4.

A．cast doubt on

B．shown sympathy for

C．taken any notice of

D．put trust in

5.

A．bridge

B．gulf

C．opposition

D．association

6.

A．illustration

B．definition

C．navigation

D．accusation

7.

A．prizing

B．initiating

C．fighting

D．escaping

8.

A．take care

B．take charge

C．make sense

D．make sure

9.

A．repeatedly

B．periodically

C．scarcely

D．accidentally

10.

A．bother with

B．contribute to

C．consist of

D．admit to

11.

A．spite

B．knowledge

C．empathy

D．necessity

12.

A．Obviously

B．Naturally

C．Consequently

D．Strikingly

13.

A．imposed

B．healed

C．received

D．examined

14.

A．psychological

B．geographical

C．ideological

D．demographical

15.

A．discounts

B．awards

C．spotlights

D．evaluates