Yuan Tian, who wears a traditional Lao dress is preparing tea in the food and agricultural products section of the fifth China International Import Expo. As head of the exhibit booth and general manager of the company, Yuan knows too well
Eight years ago, several Chinese businessmen traveling the Bolaven Plateau of Laos found
With the launch of the China-Laos Railway, transportation costs have dropped significantly for the tea company,
2 . Liao Wentao, a pet undertaker, put the body of 2-year-old Garfield on a small bed surrounded by flowers. Then he let the cat’s owner say a last goodbye before cremation (火化). “We send off 400 to 500 pets each year, and there’s a great demand for pet funerals,” he told China News.
Keeping pets has become a trend for young people in China and people are more than willing to pay for whatever their pets need. From 2019 to 2021, China’s pet market grew by almost 18% and hit 348.8billion yuan in value in 2021, according to a report by Research Consulting Group.
As the pet economy develops, animal lovers’ various needs have boosted the emergence and development of related businesses such as bathing, pet food, pet beauty and healthcare.
In addition to basic services, pet owners are increasingly paying for many new services, such as training, pet funerals, insurance, photography and entertainment. The growing pet market has also given birth to a large number of new pet-related jobs, noted CCTV News.
Liu Wei, 33, is a famous pet detective in Shanghai. He and his team work on finding families’ lost pets. “We have successfully helped find more than 1,000 pets. Besides cats and dogs, there are other pets like birds, lizards and hamsters,” Liu said. “In many big cities, cats and dogs have become an important part of many families and are taken good care of. So what we look for are not just pets, but family members.”
Apart from pet undertakers and detectives, some people work as pet food testers, pet sitters and pet trainers. According to Tu Di, secretary—general of the Hunan Pet Industry Association, the booming pet market shows people’s improved living standards.
However, there are also problems with the industry, for example, the high fees of taking pets to the vet (兽医). Many pet owners have called for stricter pricing regulations for pet medical services, reported Global Times.
1. Why is Liao’s story mentioned in the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the topic. | B．To teach readers a lesson. |
| C．To sum up the main idea. | D．To involve readers in a story. |
| A．By introducing an argument. | B．By telling some true stories. |
| C．By giving numbers and examples. | D．By focusing on basic pet—related services. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Doubtful. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．The low quality of services. | B．The rapid growth of the industry. |
| C．The lack of related regulations. | D．The various needs of animal lovers. |
3 . Germany’s factories, which power Europe’s economy, produced less during September than at any time in the past two years, which experts say could be an indicator of an approaching European recession (经济衰退).
The S&P Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index, or S&P Global PMI, found that Germany’s manufacturing activity dropped to 47.8 in September, from 49.1 in August. The survey said the drop in factory output was due to customers either putting off or canceling orders because of fast-rising prices caused by more expensive fuel bills.
Joe Hayes, a senior economist at S&P Global, said while the whole world is in the middle of a manufacturing decline, Europe appears to be at the slowdown’s center. “Production fell at a rate which has only been larger during crisis periods,” Hayes told The Telegraph. “New orders also fell at a rapid pace, reflecting the hesitancy among clients to buy goods at expensive prices.”
The analysis also showed that Europe’s other manufacturing powerhouse, France, is struggling to remain competitive. The S&P Global PMI said French companies’ order books shrank during September, with around one-third of businesses reporting customers had canceled orders because of rising prices.
Phil Smith, an associate director at S&P Global, said Europe is experiencing “a continuous downturn”. He added that producers had been “coming under pressure from a deepening drop in demand as well as an energy-led rise in cost inflation (通货膨胀)”.
1. What happened in Europe this September?| A．Factories’ efficiency rose in Europe. |
| B．Factories’ production dropped in Germany. |
| C．Customers’ purchase continuously increased. |
| D．Fuel bills’ prices constantly decreased. |
| A．The whole world is experiencing recession. |
| B．Factories fail to remain competitive. |
| C．Expensive fuel bills lead to a drop in demand. |
| D．Customers hesitate to buy cheap goods. |
| A．Expanded. | B．Faded | C．Changed. | D．Decreased. |
| A．Negative. | B．Hopeful. | C．Positive. | D．Unconcerned. |
4 . Washington’s reported plan to announce new limits on China’s access to US chip technology will severely disturb the global semiconductor sector (半导体行业), which has already been struggling with risks of division in the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said on Thursday. Their comments came after Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the US Commerce Department is expected to put forward a series of rules this week governing which semiconductor technologies can be exported to China.
Bai Ming, deputy director of international market research at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said the reported move would be part of a broader push by Washington, to cut China off from the rest of the world in chip supply chains. He also added that it is a move that would be unrealistic and have painful results. “Such an attempt will strike not just US chip companies, but the global semiconductor industrial chain too. Recent years, China has become the biggest chip market and it has growing influence in semiconductor manufacturing,” Bai said. “Those moves would harm global chip companies, which count on China to make a profit,” said Pan Helin, co-director of Zhejiang University’s International Business School.
The Chinese mainland imports more than $300 billion of semiconductors annually, and most, though not all, major US semiconductor companies get at least 25 percent of their sales from the Chinese mainland market, according to an article by Christopher Thomas on the Brookings Institution’s website. “Access to this big market is essential to the success of any globally competitive chip firm today and in the future. A cooperation between China and the US is beneficial to the world.” The Semiconductor Industry Association, a Washington-based group, said in a report.
Zhong Xinlong, a senior consultant at the Beijing-based China Center, said such limits will motivate Chinese companies to achieve breakthroughs. In 2015, the US government blocked Intel from supplying its high-end processors to China’s supercomputer builders. Under the pressure, Chinese researchers came up with self-developed processors a year later, Zhong said.
1. What will happen if new chip limit measures are issued?| A．It has little influence on China’s chip market. |
| B．The chip supply chain between China and other countries will be cut off immediately. |
| C．It will have a great impact on the global semiconductor industry. |
| D．The income of US chip Industry will increase. |
| A．The chip market in mainland China is broad. |
| B．Mainland China needs more and more semiconductor chips. |
| C．The global chip market is highly competitive. |
| D．The Chinese market is essential to American semiconductor companies. |
| A．They are of benefit to Chinese chip technology. |
| B．American chip technology is not particularly important to China. |
| C．Without American chip technology, we cannot achieve breakthroughs. |
| D．We can develop new chips year later. |
| A．China’s chip technology will have a rapid development. |
| B．Limits against China would affect all players in semiconductor industry. |
| C．The United States has far-reaching influence on Chinese chips. |
| D．China and the United States should strengthen cooperation in semiconductor technology. |
5 . Though the COVID-19 pandemic has badly affected the food industry, the prefabricated food (预制菜) market has witnessed a fast growth.
“I bought some prefabricated food in late April when my community was locked down due to the coronavirus outbreak,” a Beijing-based resident Yu told Global Times. “It was then that I realized there were so many different sorts of prefabricated food. All you need to do is to put some water into the heating package and a fair meal would be ready in minutes.”
Prefabricated food has become increasingly popular over the last two years, with plenty of companies entering the business and different kinds of productions keeping hitting the shelves. The total market scale for prefabricated food reached 345.9 billion yuan in 2021. It is expected that China’s prefabricated food market will stay a high growth rate in the near future, with a market scale estimated to reach 1.07 trillion yuan in 2026.
Many investors have started to pour money into it. From 2013 to 2021, a total of 71 investments were conducted in the prefabricated food sector(行业). Even so there are problems linked to the growth of the industry. For instance, the prefabricated food industry is made up of a long value chain from production, cold-chain logistics(冷链物流) to delivery, which requires companies to realize smooth operation.
In addition, the sector’s product quality problem has also begun to come under the spotlight, becoming one of the most common complaints by consumers, according to an analysis released by China Consumer Association(CCA). “There are prefabricated food products with no detailed labels and many restaurants do not inform customers when offering them prefabricated food.” CCA’s analysis said.
CCA emphasized that with the rapid development of the prefabricated food market, relevant rules need to be rolled out to promote the standardized development of the industry and to guide the industry’s healthy growth.
1. What can we infer from the Beijing-based resident Yu’s description?| A．She suffered a lot during the period when her community was locked down. |
| B．She had known prefabricated food quite a lot before the pandemic broke out. |
| C．The pandemic to some extent increased the popularity of prefabricated food. |
| D．Numerous cooking skills are needed to prepare prefabricated food at home. |
| A．Promising but worthless. |
| B．Profitable but insecure. |
| C．Popular but unsuccessful. |
| D．Well-received but challenging. |
| A．Draw people’s great concern. |
| B．Disappear from people’s sight. |
| C．Have the potential to get settled. |
| D．Have a positive effect on customers. |
| A．Canceling some rules. |
| B．Making some regulations. |
| C．Promoting the sales. |
| D．Enriching the production varieties. |
6 . The battle to contain the global obesity crisis speeded up as American public health experts pressed for a sugar tax on the country’s most popular source of refreshment — sweetened carbonated drinks and fruit juices.
In what is certain to become a worldwide debate on the use of sanctions (制裁) to deal with obesity, a group led by academics from Yale and Harvard universities proposed a “cola war”, with a 1 cent tax per fluid ounce on sweetened beverages, raising the price of the average can of cola by 15 to 20 percent. They say this would cut calorie consumption from drinks by a minimum of 10 percent and contribute almost $15 bn towards the health costs of obesity.
“The reasons to proceed are convincing. The science base linking the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages to the risk of chronic disease is clear. Research suggests a tax would have strong positive effects on reducing consumption. We believe that taxes on beverages that help drive the obesity epidemic should and will become routine,” the experts say in the New England Journal of Medicine.
British nutrition specialists backed the move but said other sanctions, such as a tariff (关税) on sugar imports, could have the same impact but be less politically arguable.
Tam Fry, spokesman for UK National Obesity Forum, said: “We have got to start thinking very seriously about taxing unhealthy food and drink as part of the drive to improve the nation’s health and cut obesity. The amount of sugar that goes into these soft drinks is surprising and it has a double whammy, increasing obesity and rotting teeth.”
The US proposal follows a report by the respected Institute of Medicine this month calling for an increase in local taxes on soft drinks and junk food. In the UK, the British Medical Association narrowly defeated a proposal for a chocolate tax at its annual meeting.
Consumption of fizzy drinks, fruit juices, smoothies and other sweetened beverages is rising rapidly around the world and is recognized as a major contributor to the obesity epidemic, especially among children. Americans are drinking twice as much of the drinks as they did 25 years ago, and they now contribute 172 calories daily to the average US child’s diet. Experts say the UK is close behind.
Jack Winkler, professor of nutrition policy at London Metropolitan University, said: “I support this. It would be a massive public acknowledgement about the danger sugar poses to health.” But he proposed raising the price of sugar permanently by reforming the world goods markets. Charging tariffs, which are invisible, would be much better than raising taxes, he said. The British Nutrition Foundation said that, instead of altering food choices, increasing taxes “could simply mean higher prices for consumers — especially those on lower incomes”.
1. According to the passage, the sugar tax on the popular sweetened drinks and fruit juices is proposed _________.| A．to warn the public that such drinks are harmful and poisonous |
| B．to restrict the production and elimnate the global obesity crisis |
| C．to start a worldwide debate on the strategies to deal with obesity crisis |
| D．to reduce calorie consumption and raise money to fight against obesity |
| A．reason | B．blow | C．aim | D．struggle |
| A．Now it is urgent to deal with the obesity epidemic in the United States and Britain. |
| B．The British people consume more soft drinks and fruit juices than the Americans do today. |
| C．The consumption of sweetened soft drinks and fruit juices is rising rapidly around the world. |
| D．Americans are drinking twice as much compared with the amount a quarter of a century ago. |
| A．Ban on Carbonated Drinks and Fruit Juices |
| B．Link between Sweetened Beverages and Obesity |
| C．Demand for Economic Measures to Reduce Obesity |
| D．The High Consumption and Rising Price of Soft Drinks |
7 . Spending beyond one’s means is becoming a national problem for Americans. Borrowing has become so easy that it takes great willpower for people to refuse it.“I received a number of gold MasterCard and gold Visa card offers in the mail during the past two months,” said one computer engineer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Chicago. “I got three of them in one day last week.”
Lenders are providing easy credit (信贷) for borrowers. Many banks now offer every borrower a great variety of credit, a service once offered almost only to big companies. Norwest Bank Minneapolis offers lending programs for cars and boats that can cut monthly payments nearly in half. Carmakers, too, are lengthening easier terms. Ford Motor Credit states that 45% of its recent lending has been for sixty months, rather than the thirty-six-month period that was usual before.
The total consumer debt in the United States rose 173 percent between 1974 and 1984, as the debt for each man, woman, and child increased from $10,264 to $26,566. Huge debt now is present in our economy (经济) at all levels. As a nation, we are more than $7 trillion in debt, and the total keeps increasing astonishingly.
As we have overborrowed, so have we overspent. In late 1986, the share of after-tax income that Americans saved sank below 2 percent for a short time, less than half the figure at which we saved only 10 years ago. Americans now are buying from foreigners between about $50 and $100 billion more Mercedes and Toyotas, Paris fashions, and tours to Europe than the Boeing 747s, agriculture machinery, or Kansas wheat that the foreigners bought from America. The country could not produce and pay for all the things it wanted.
To make a long story, we Americans have serious problems in keeping down spending and keeping up personal saving. It is high time for us American people to learn the basics of long term money management.
1. According to the author, what is a main reason for Americans to overspend?| A．Americans buy a lot of foreign products. |
| B．It is easy for Americans to manage their debts. |
| C．Americans have more extra money than before. |
| D．Borrowing money has become a simple matter. |
| A．help more Americans to settle their debts |
| B．attract more customers |
| C．make better use of its money |
| D．encourage people to buy foreign cars |
| A．Limiting the use of credit cards. |
| B．Advising people on what to buy. |
| C．Teaching people how to manage money. |
| D．Reducing average incomes. |
| A．America should sell more of its products abroad. |
| B．Government should prevent people from over-borrowing. |
| C．People’s income determines their money management. |
| D．A healthy society has to learn to live within its means. |
8 . The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that offends our sense of justice. A business may maximize the amount of money it makes by damaging the environment and hurting people. When government regulation is effective, and the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and the public doesn’t care.
It is easy to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and they are under obligation to maximize profits for shareholders by legal means.
Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.
The public can do that by accusing businesses of harming them. The public may also make their opinion felt by choosing to buy sustainably harvested products; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.
In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease, transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a fast-food company made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers dropped, the meat industry followed immediately. The public’s task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure.
Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.
My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish. I believe that changes in public attitudes are essential for changes in businesses’ environmental practices.
1. The main idea of Paragraph 3 is that environmental damage__________.| A．is the result of ignorance of the public |
| B．requires political action if it is to be stopped |
| C．can be prevented by the action of ordinary people |
| D．can only be stopped by educating business leaders |
| A．reduce their own individual impact on the environment |
| B．learn more about the impact of business on the environment |
| C．raise awareness of the effects of specific environmental disasters |
| D．influence the environmental policies of businesses and governments |
| A．Meat packers stopped supplying hamburgers to fast-food chains. |
| B．Meat packers persuaded the government to reduce their expenses. |
| C．A fast-food company forced their meat suppliers to follow the law. |
| D．A fast-food company encouraged the government to introduce regulations. |
| A．Will the world survive the threat caused by big businesses? |
| B．How can big businesses be encouraged to be less driven by profit? |
| C．What environmental dangers are caused by the greed of businesses? |
| D．Are big businesses to blame for the damage they cause to the environment? |
9 . The Internet of Things (IoT) has become especially important as our daily life and business have become more complex, from bill payment to healthcare issues, where we have gradually explored deeper into finding solutions to improving the effectiveness of processes.
According to a report by GlobalData, the global IoT market will reach up to 1.1 trillion dollars by 2024, with an annual growth rate of 13% during that period. Therefore, this area will play an important role in maintaining competition among companies.
The IoT is a digital interconnection of everyday objects with the Internet. The IoT allows The IoTis a digital interconnection of everyday objects with the Internet. The IoT allows systems to be remotely sensed and controlled through the existing network. This enables greater integration (融合) between the physical world and computer-based systems, which represents greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Among the main applications of the technology are cost optimization (最优化) tor industrial and transportation companies through remote monitoring of devices and vehicles, data collection for real-time production analysis, and tracking of final cargo (货物) delivery.
Other IoT applications are wearables, which are a set of electronic devices that are incorporated (合并) into some part of our body interacting continuously between us and other devices. Wearables represent the boom of the last few years, as they register what we eat, our heart rate, warn us if we are sick or stressed. They come in the form of smartwatches and GPS-enabled running shoes, to name a few.
On the other hand, the healthcare sector is also undergoing changes brought about by the IoT. The medical sensors market is expected to reach a turnover of $ 27. 7 billion in 2026 with a growth over the next few years of 9. 9% according to Transparency Market Research.
In this sense, IoT has come with a promise for people in their daily lives but also for investors, who consider it an excellent opportunity to invest. IoT will increase the productivity of companies, in addition to progressing towards the growth of telecommunications, data analysis and the arrival of intelligent machines.
1. What do we know about the IoT?| A．It has limited applications. | B．It is a highly promising industry. |
| C．It makes daily life more complex. | D．It makes companies less competitive. |
| A．The definition of IoT. | B．The development of IoT. |
| C．The origin of IoT. | D．The inventors of IoT. |
| A．They can relieve stress. | B．They can treat the disease. |
| C．They can instruct what to eat. | D．They can closely monitor health. |
| A．It controls cargo delivery remotely. | B．It brings a rapid growth for companies. |
| C．It improves the efficiency of companies. | D．It encourages interaction among companies. |
10 . Andrew White brings his four-legged friends Oliver and Amore to his neighborhood Petco pet stores in San Diego for a little takeout. He has brought the pair to a kibble refill station (宠物食品补给站) that allows owners to use their own containers (容器).
“It’s more affordable for everyone,” he said.
Like the price of many things these days, the price of owning a pet has been increasing. A report on petfoodindustry.com finds the cost of feeding household animals was up about 6% in March over last year. The overall pet category saw a 7.5% increase compared to March of 2021. The American Pet Products Association says a record $123.6 billion was spent in the US last year on pets. A survey shows 70% of American families now include a pet of some Kind.
In Kansas City, the KC Pet Project is seeing animals surrendered because of their owners’ money problems. “It is sad to see a number of pets coming in through our doors,” said KC Pet Project Chief Communications Officer Tori Fugate. “People are calling us every week saying, ‘I don’t want to leave my animal, but I can’t find a place to live with it.’”
One big cost is vet (兽医) care. The KC Pet Project gave out more than $96,000 last year to help owners with medical bills. Recent findings from Consumers’ Checkbook show costs differed widely from vet to vet in seven Cities they listed. So they say f pet owners want to save money, do some checking first. “If you know that your pets are going to need certain treatment, you can call around and get prices, and then decide what to do next,” said Consumers Checkbook Executive Editor Kevin Brasler.
In Florida, the Humane Society of Tampa Bay has increased its animal pantries (食品储藏室), so people can get free food for their dogs and cats.
“I believe things will get better,” said Sherry Silk, CEO of the Humane Society of Tampa Bay.“It’s got to get better because the animals really need us.”
1. What do the numbers in paragraph 3 mainly show?| A．Keeping pets is still popular in the US. |
| B．The costs for pets are rising in the US. |
| C．Most Americans have difficulty keeping pets. |
| D．Many Americans are careful about having pets. |
| A．Hunted for. | B．Looked over. | C．Given up. | D．Handed out. |
| A．Ask for medical prices first. | B．Choose a big local pet hospital. |
| C．Call the KC Pet Project for help. | D．Get different vets to examine them. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Worried. | C．Hopeful. | D．Doubtful. |
