1 . The world’s population reached five billion on the day I was born. That was in Indonesia back in 1987, and my parents was shocked that there were so many people on the planet.     1     In October 2011, the seven billionth baby was born, and experts predict that there will be ten billion of us before the end of this century.

    2     If you said “hello to a different person every second, it would take you 222 years to greet everyone on the planet. If seven billion people made a human chain with their hands, the chain would go to the moon and back nine times.

The human population has never been bigger, but in some ways the planet seems to begetting unbelievably smaller. In the past, travellers from Europe to Indonesia spent months at sea. Now you just have to sit on a plane for a few hours. When you arrived in another country a hundred years ago, you saw unfamiliar styles of clothing and buildings and discovered a completely different culture. In many places today, clothing and new buildings are very similar, and people enjoy the same things.     3    

Even the languages that we use are becoming more global. There are around seven thousand languages in use today.     4     I grew up in a small village where everyone spoke Baras, one of Indonesia’s local languages. Today, like most of the youth from my village, I live in the capital, Jakarta, and speak Indonesian there. The only regular Baras speakers at present are the older people who have stayed in the country, so the language is threatened with extinction.

A．But the number is decreasing fast.

B．Although we are on different continents, we are starting to live the same lives.

C．The planet might be a lot more peaceful if that were the case.

D．However, since then the population has continued to increase at an alarming rate.

E．A number as big as seven billion is hard to imagine.

F．With only one language left, there will be no culture difference in the world.

2 . New research shows that the cost of raising a child in China is nearly seven times its GDP per capita (头数), far more than in the United States and Japan.

GDP, or gross domestic product, is the measure of the total value of goods and services in a country. GDP per capita is a measure resulting from GDP divided by the size of a nation’s total population.

The high cost of child-raising is one more difficulty Chinese policymakers face as they try to deal with quickly decreasing birth rates.

Experts warn China’s aging population will put pressure on its health and social security systems. A decrease in workers could also severely limit growth for the world’s second largest economy in the coming years.

New policies permit families to have as many as three children But China’s birth rate dropped to 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021. That is the lowest since the National Bureau of Statistics began recording the information in 1949.

The high costs of raising a child have caused officials in China to place restrictions (限制规定) on the private tutoring industry. Some areas have been giving couples money for having a second or third child.

The average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China in 2019 was 485,000 yuan for a first child. That is 6.9 times China’s GDP per capita that year. That information comes from a recent report from the YuWa Population Research Institute in Beijing.

China ranks second highest among the 13 countries included in the study. The country is behind only South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world. The United States number, based on 2015 data, is at 4.11 times GDP per capita. Japan stands at 4.26, based on data from 2010.

Child raising costs are even higher in China’s major cities, reaching more than 1 million yuan in Shanghai and 969,000 yuan in Beijing. Birth rates in the two cities are even lower than the national average.

YuWa warned the decreasing birth rate would “profoundly (深刻地) affect” China’s economic growth potential, its ability to create and its welfare (福利) problems.

The study found that China would need to spend at least 5 percent of its yearly GDP to provide reasons for couples to have more children. That would include education funding (基金), special housing loan (贷款) rates and tax breaks. Other considerations include equal time for mothers and fathers to be away from their jobs and the building of more childcare centers.

1. Why do officials in China place restrictions on the private tutoring industry?

A．Because of the high cost of childcare.

B．Because there are too many extra-curricular tutoring classes.

C．Because the tutoring industry does not help students improve their grades.

D．Because many families want to give their children more leisure time.

2. What can we know from the passage?

A．China has the lowest birth rate in the world.

B．The cost of childcare in Beijing is higher than that in Shanghai.

C．The reduction of workers won’t limit China’s growth in the future.

D．The birth rate in 2021 has been the lowest since 1949.

3. What is the GDP per capita in 2019?

A．About 3,346,500 yuan.	B．Around 70,300 yuan.
C．Less than 50,300 yuan.	D．More than 80,000 yuan.

4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．The measures that can reduce education costs.

B．The conclusion of the research by YuWa Population Research Institute.

C．The ways to increase the birth rate.

D．The impact of the decline of the birth rates.

3 . COVID-19 shutdowns forced people out of work and pushed tens of millions into poverty worldwide. Governments tried hard to provide aid. It was easy in a small country, but difficult for a country with large population and vast rural areas.     1     Doing a detailed, nationwide, house-to-house survey takes people time and money. Luckily, satellites can see poverty from space.

Researchers have been finding ways to identify areas of wealth and poverty in satellite images. Through some satellite data and aerial images of one town or another, you can sort of tell whether it’s wealthy or not. Wealthier homes tend to have metal roofs while poor homes tend to have thatched roofs. Wealthier neighborhoods have paved roads and bigger plots of lands, more spaced out.     2     The researchers trained artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize these patterns.

    3     The researchers put AI to work studying patterns of mobile phone use in those regions. Rich people will make just more phone calls than poor people. They also might make more expensive international calls. They might use more mobile data because they have smartphones.     4    

The researchers use the system to identify about 60,000 people to receive benefits. The advantage of the satellite imagery and phone data approach is that it’s extremely fast and very convenient.     5     In shocks like climate disasters where there’s no time or way to get detailed information on the ground, satellites mobile phones and AI could help deliver aid quickly to people in need.

A．It was opposite in a big country.

B．How do they locate the neediest people?

C．So there’s a lot of information in the images.

D．Most importantly, it’s very cheap to carry out.

E．Worse still, it’s not so economical as a house-to-house survey.

F．However, in general, poorer people will just have feature phones.

G．What the researchers did next was to target the neediest people in those regions.

4 . New York, 11 July — The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to World Population Prospects 2022, released on World Population Day.

“This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we expect the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and get amazed at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates (孕妇及儿童死亡率),” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.

World Population Prospects 2022 states that fertility (生育能力) has fallen markedly in recent decades for many countries. Today, two-thirds of the global population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman, roughly the level required for zero growth in the long run for a population with low mortality. The populations of 61 countries or areas are projected to decrease by 1 percent or more between 2022 and 2050, due to sustained low levels of fertility and, in some cases, increasing rates of emigration.

“The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex and multidimensional,” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “Rapid population growth makes removing poverty, combating hunger and malnutrition (营养不良), and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult. On the contrary, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to health, education and gender equality, will contribute to reducing fertility levels and slowing global population growth.”

1. The underlined word “surpass” can be replaced by ______.

A．overtake

B．overlook

C．overcome

D．overwhelm

2. What can we learn from this passage?

A．The concern for global problems is a shared responsibility.

B．The only factor that affects those 61 countries’ populations is fertility.

C．The fertility has been decreasing in recent decades around the world.

D．The annual World Population Day is a milestone for global inhabitants.

3. How can we describe the relationship between population growth and sustainable development?

A．Critical and direct.	B．Difficult and apparent.
C．Urgent and ambiguous.	D．Significant and complicated.

4. What’s the passage mainly about?

A．The sharp decline of fertility.

B．The current world population situation.

C．The ways to achieve sustainable development goals.

D．The celebration of the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant.

5 . Many adults in South Korea have chosen either not to have children or not to marry. A South Korean government agency announced in September that the total fertility rate reached 0. 81 last year. The total fertility rate is the average number of babies born to each woman in their reproductive years. South Korea⁵s fertility rate has been the world’s lowest for three years now.

The population decreased for the first time in 2021. It raised concerns for severe damage to the economy. Some observers expect labor shortages and high spending on retirement payments as the number of older people increases while the number of taxpayers decreases. President Yoon Suk Yeol has ordered policymakers to find better ways to deal with the problem. The fertility rate, he said, is still decreasing although South Korea spent $ 210 billion over the past 16 years to increase it.

Many young South Koreans say that they don’t want to have a family. Reasons some say for not having children include: a difficult job market, costly housing, inequality between the sexes, and social inequality. The high cost of raising children in a competitive society is also a reason. Some women say men expect them to do much of the childcare while they face discrimination at work.

Lee So-Young is a population policy expert at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. She said, “People think our country isn’t an easy place to live.” And she added, “They believe their children can’t have better lives than them.” Choi Yoon Kyung is an expert at the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education. She said many people who fail to enter good schools and get good jobs feel they have become “dropouts” who “cannot be happy”.

South Korea has been offering different incentives (刺激) and support programs for those who give birth to many children. But Choi said the fertility rate has been falling too fast to see any real effects.

1. Why does the author mention the number in paragraph 1?

A．To present a fact.	B．To explain a rule.
C．To clarify a concept.	D．To make a comparison.

2. What could be a result of low fertility rate?

A．More citizens fail to be happy.

B．Retirement payment falls down.

C．People have to pay higher taxes.

D．Less people are available for work.

3. Which is a cause of the decreasing fertility rate in South Korea?

A．The gender equality.

B．The loss of government support.

C．The ever increasing life pressure.

D．The high expectation of children.

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．The rising stress among young South Koreans.

B．The government^ effort to improve fertility rate.

C．The continuous low fertility rate in South Korea.

D．The severe economic damage of less new-born babies.

6 . The Chinese government ends its one-child policy (政策) and allows families to have three children. The policy is meant to balance population development, stop a falling birth rate (出生率) and strengthen the country’s labor force (劳动力).

China, with the largest population in the world, started the one-child policy in 1980. But the government allowed only a small number of couples to have two children. For example, some families in the countryside could have two children, if the first-born child is a girl. In 2016, the Chinese government gave other couples a chance to have two children if one of them was an only child. Because of aging of population, in 2021, it allowed families to have three children.

To the newest policy, different families have different opinions. “Too many young people in the cities are no longer interested in having two or three children,” an official said. “People in the countryside are more interested.”

At the end of 2021, China had a population of more than 1.4 billion people. A total of 900 million of them have jobs. But the labor market population will drop in 30 years. That is to say, the country will be in great need of labor by the year 2050. With the three-child policy, an increase in births can solve this problem.

Boys and girls, what do you think of the three-child policy? Do you want to have new-born brothers or sisters?

1. Why does the Chinese government end the one-child policy?

A．Because China needs a larger population.

B．Because a falling birth rate must be stopped.

C．Because most families want to have a second or third child.

2. How long does China take from the one-child policy to the three-child policy?

A．20 years.

B．30 years.

C．more than 40 years.

3. How do most young people in the cities react (反应) to the three-child policy?

A．They strongly support the policy.

B．They don’t think it is good.

C．They’re not interested in it any more.

4. When will our country be seriously short of labour if one-child policy continues?

A．In 2035.

B．In 2050.

C．In 2070.

5. What may happen after we have the “three-child” policy?

A．The population development will be balanced.

B．The labor market population will drop.

C．There will be more old people.

7 . The Most Populous Cities in the World

The cities listed below are the most populous (人口稠密的) in the world, according to a 2018 U. N. report.

Tokyo, Japan

Population in Urban Area: 37,340,000

Population in City Area: 13,960,000

Tokyo is the most populated city in the world and the largest “Megacity” in the world.

The city called the “Capital of the East” is located on the eastern coast of the Japanese main island of Honshu.

Delhi, India

Population in Urban Area: 31,181,000

Population in City Area: 20,591,874

Delhi, also known as the National Capital Territory of India is the largest city in the country. According to a U. N. report, the Indian capital is expected to be the spot of the world’s second most populous city through at least 2030.

Shanghai, China

Population in Urban Area: 27,796,000

Population in City Area: 22,315,474

This is China’s most populated and also wealthiest city. Situated in the Yangtze River Delta, in eastern China, it has a huge business district, two large airports (Pudong and Hongqiao) and the world’s fastest train (the Shanghai Maglev).

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Population in Urban Area: 22,043,028

Population in City Area: 10,021,295

This busy metropolis (大都市) in southeast Brazil, is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere (半球) and the largest Portuguese-speaking city in the world.

1. How many people are there in City Area of Delhi?

A．10,021,295.

B．20,591,874.

C．22,315,474.

D．13,960,000.

2. Which of the following cities is the richest in its country?

A．Tokyo, Japan.

B．Delhi, India.

C．Shanghai, China.

D．Sao Paulo, Brazil.

3. What do the listed cities have in common?

A．They belong to the same hemisphere.

B．They are the largest cities in their countries.

C．They all have a larger population in their countries.

D．They are all the richest in their own countries.

8 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

There’s one thing     1     certain — we’re all getting older. But, growing old     2     (graceful) is no bad thing. And with age comes wisdom. However, as the world population ages, will there be enough people to replace our younger selves?

A situation     3     there are more old people than young certainly has     4     effect on the world. A report by the Pew Research Center says that globally the number of people over 65 years will be three times by 2050,     5     (change) some countries’ demographic make-up (人口构成).

This growing and dependent population means that there is an increased demand for health and social care. Governments will struggle to provide satisfactory pensions (养老金), which     6     (fund) by taxes paid by the working population. And long-term, a smaller population of economically-active people may be a problem for     7     (company) trying to hire staff.

Attitudes to an ageing population vary around the world. The Pew Research Center survey found that 87% of Japanese people were most concerned about it, while only 26% of people from the USA were. Here, immigration is helping in order     8     (make) the younger workforce larger and stronger. Some countries thought the elderly should take care of     9     (they), while others thought it was the     10     (responsible) of the family. Many thought the government should be responsible.

9 . As the global population grows and shifts towards urban living, the land available in our cities is being under increasing pressure.In order to be sustainable, cities need to find ways to minimize their urban expansion.One option is to build upwards; another is to dig down.

In Montreal, constructed underground to relieve overcrowding in the city streets is RESO —one of the largest underground complexes in the world.It is a network connecting everything from shops and banks to flats and hotels.This shows how going underground can meet human needs whilst also bringing certain environmental benefits.Underground transport can reduce traffic jam above ground, thereby improving air quality.Furthermore, thanks to their relatively constant climate throughout the year, underground spaces consume less energy for heating and cooling.

When planning underground construction projects, developers must consider existing structures on or near the site, such as the remains of historic buildings.Designers must also ensure any underground space intended for human use has good air quality.One example is the forthcoming LDN Hotel,an underground hotel beneath the streets of London.Designers are using a wide range of plans to help keep the air inside clean,together with a state-of-the-art ventilation system (通风系统).

Light is another key consideration.In New York, plans for the world's first underground park Demonstrate novel ways of bringing natural rays beneath the surface.By employing solar technology light is to be reflected down through a series of pipes into the terminal below.This light would be sufficient for photosynthesis (光合作用) to occur and the park's plants to grow naturally.

Today's architects are developing innovative ways to make underground spaces functional and comfortable.The question remains whether they can provide sustainable and realistic options for the future.Besides practical considerations, there exists the challenge of building a positive perception of “going underground".Yet, the obvious challenges of constructing habitable underground spaces must be weighed against the urgent issue of housing the world's ballooning population.One day, it will feel as natural to live and work underground as it does to do so over 100 storeys high.

1. What does the author intend to do in paragraph 2?

A．To advertise the underground complexes.

B．To give suggestions on relieving crowdedness.

C．To explain how the underground network works.

D．To introduce the benefits of building underground.

2. How does the author develop his opinion?

A．By giving examples.

B．By listing study findings.

C．By making comparisons.

D．By quoting others' words.

3. Which of the following will the author agree?

A．Going underground can solve the problem of global warming.

B．Good air quality is superior to other factors.

C．Natural light is not necessary for underground plants.

D．The future of going underground calls for people's positive attitude.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Ways to house the world population.

B．Concerns for the urban expansion.

C．Why and how to build underground.

D．The promising future of our cities.

10 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. double          B. intense          C. pressures       D. stock          E. agriculture       F. trapped G. withdrawal     H. availability   I. drive             J. expanding     K. rising

Throughout history, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty and religious expression. How much more     1     will these conflicts be when people fight over the Earth’s most indispensable resource water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the     2     of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

Less than three percent of the planet’s     3     is fresh water, and almost two-thirds of this amount is     4     in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand-Can the Irrigation Miracle Last, Sandra Postel outlines three forces that     5     tension and conflict over freshwater. Using up the water “resource pie”. In India, the world’s second-most populous nation, with over 1 billion inhabitants, the rate of groundwater     6     is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country. Although water is a renewable resource, it is not a(n)     7     one. The freshwater available today for more than 6 billion people is no greater than it was 2,000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200 million. (The current U.S. population is 287 million.)

Global     8     accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world’s most water-stressed, controversial areas the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nileland and Tigris-Euphrates population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of Palestinian territory will more than     9     over the next generation. Most experts agree that, because of geography, population     10     and politics, water wars are most likely to break out in the Middle East, a region where the amount of available freshwater per capita will decrease by about 50% over the next generation.