More than 300 participants
Themed “strengthening agricultural science and technology cooperation to jointly promote global food security,” the conference was hosted by the Center for International Agricultural Research (CIAR) and the Department of International Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS),
Wu Kongming, president of CAAS, said that CAAS remains committed to providing Chinese
According to Carlos Watson, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Representative in China, the conference offered
“Given China’s
During the conference, experts discussed the current situation and future prospects of international cooperation in agricultural science and technology. They also discussed the policy environment, market environment, investment model and service demand for overseas agricultural investment, as well as strategies and measures
The International Agricultural Research Conference
2 . On October 12,2021,China officially announced its first five national parks, which are homes to endangered species ranging from the Siberian tigers on the Russian border to the world’s last 30 Hainan black crested gibbons(黑冠长臂猿)in southern China’s tropical rainforest.
By uniting hundreds of protected areas managed by various provinces, the new national park system’s goal is to strengthen conservation under the central authority of the new National Forestry and Grassland Administration(NFGA)
These five parks cover an area two-third the size of the US national park system. The largest, Sanjiangyuan National Park in Qinghai Province, is almost the size of Mississippi.
With such an ambitious plan, there are bound to be challenges. For one the government has to balance the need for the livelihoods of the locals with wildlife conservation. It has not announced a plan to create a permitting system that would regulate how people enjoy nature. What’s more,ecotourism-which is defined as tourism that benefits both locals and their environment-only exists in a fifth of China’s nature reserves.
But there’s hope that the existing ecotourism projects in such nature reserves as Sanjiangyuan National Park and Wolong Nature Reserve will inspire efforts elsewhere in the new park system. Since 2018, Sanjiangyuan National Park has run a community-led tourism program that benefits both locals and snow leopards(豹), the park’s main tourist draw. For $43 a day, visitors can stay with local families, who act as guides to spot these rare “cats” in the wild.
“The community has made all the major decisions, and 100 percent of the income stays in the community. It’s been incredibly successful,” says Marc Brody, who has worked in China since 1994.
NFGA agrees that well-designed ecotourism can improve local ecosystems. It says that a core mission(核心使命)of China’s national parks is to promote eco-civilizationa mission that can be advanced by involving visitors Written into China’s constitution(宪法)in 2012, eco-civilization means scientifically balancing the economic development and the environmental protection.
1. Which park is home to the thirty endangered gibbons?| A．Hainan National Park. | B．Wolong Nature Reserve. |
| C．Northeast National Park. | D．Sanjiangyuan National Park. |
| A．It is bigger than Mississippi. | B．It sits on the Russian border. |
| C．It is a pioneer in ecotourism. | D．It has a mature permitting system. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Unconcerned | C．Disapproving | D．Positive |
| A．To protect the endangered animals. |
| B．To help the local people out of poverty. |
| C．To balance the economy and the environment. |
| D．To set a better development example for the world. |
3 . It is fashionable today to criticize Big Business, and there is one issue on which the many critics agree: CEO pay. We hear that CEOs are paid too much (or too much relative to workers) , or that they control others’ pay, or that their pay is insufficiently related to positive outcomes. But the more likely truth is CEO pay is largely caused by intense competition.
It is true that CEO pay has gone up---top ones may make 300 times the pay of typical workers on average, and since the mid-1970s, CEO pay for large publicly traded American corporations has, by varying estimates, gone up by about 500%. The typical CEO of a top American corporation-from the 350 largest such companies-now makes about $18.9 million a year.
While individual cases of overpayment definitely exist, in general, the determinants of CEO pay are not so mysterious and not so trapped in corruption (腐败). In fact, overall CEO compensation for the top companies rises pretty much in line with the value of those companies on the stock market.
The best model for understanding the growth of CEO pay, though, is that of limited CEO talent in a world where business opportunities for the top firms are growing rapidly. The efforts of Americans highest-earning 1 % have been one of the more dynamic elements of the global economy.
It’s not popular to say, but one reason their pay has gone up so much is that CEOs really have upped their game relative to many other workers in the U. S. economy.
Today’s CEO, at least for major American firms, must have many more skills than simply being able to “run the company.” CEOs must have a good sense of financial markets and maybe even how the company should trade in them. They also need better public relations skills than their predecessors, as the costs of even a minor slipup can cause a bad consequence. Then there’s the fact that large American companies are much more globalized than ever before, with supply chains spread across a larger number of countries. To lead in that system requires knowledge that is fairly incredible.
There is yet another trend: virtually all major American companies are becoming tech companies, one way or another. An agribusiness company, for instance, may focus on R&D in highly IT- intensive areas such as genome sequencing (基因组序列). Similarly, it is hard to do a good job running the Walt Disney Company just by picking good movie scripts and courting stars ； you also need to build a firm capable of creating significant CGI (计算机生成图像) products for cartoon movies at the highest levels of technical sophistication and with many frontier innovations along the way.
On top of all of this, major CEOs still have to do the job they have always done- which includes motivating employees, serving as an internal role model, helping to define and extend a corporate culture, understanding the internal accounting, and presenting budgets and business plans to the board. Good CEOs are some of the world’s most powerful creators and have some of the very deepest skills of understanding.
1. Which of the following has contributed to CEO pay rise?| A．The growth in the number of cooperation |
| B．The general pay rise with a better economy |
| C．Increased business opportunities for top firms |
| D．Close cooperation among leading economics |
| A．foster a stronger sense of teamwork |
| B．finance more research and development |
| C．establish closer ties with tech companies |
| D．operate more globalized companies |
| A．operation | B．success |
| C．mistake | D．promotion |
| A．CEOs Are Not Overpaid | B．CEO Pay: Past and Present |
| C．CEOs’ Challenges of Today | D．CEO Traits: Not Easy to Define |
4 . Thousands of taxi drivers in Shenyang, Liaoning province, reportedly blocked streets with their vehicles on Sunday in protest against unlicensed vehicles using taxi-hiring apps and apps-based car rental companies providing passenger services, including high-end cars. Although the drivers also complained about the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy (补贴)by the government, their main complaint was the loss of business because of the rising number of Internet-based car services companies.
On Wednesday, news reports came that Beijing transport authorities will take measures to stop the illegal “taxi business” of private cars through the newly rising Internet apps, following the footsteps of Shenyang and Nanjing.
It is not yet clear how the Shenyang city government will handle the issue and whether it will declare the services offered by market leaders such as Didi Dache, a taxi-hiring app provider backed by Tencent Holdings, and Kuaidi Dache illegal. But Shanghai transport regulators (交通管理结构)have set a rule, by banning Didi Zhuanche, or car services offered by Didi Dache in December.
Such regulations will cause a setback to the car-hiring companies and investors that are waiting to cash in on the potentially booming business. Just last month, Didi Dache got $700 million in funding from global investors, including Singapore state investment company Temasek Holdings, Russian investment company DST Global and Tencent. Besides, the market is uncertain that Kuaidi Dache is about to finalize its latest round of funding after getting $800 million from global investors.
Regulatory uncertainties, however, could cast a shadow on the future of the Internet-based car-hiring services, which have become popular in most of China’s big cities. To be fair, these companies’ business model is anything but bad. For example, Didi Zhuanche works side by side with established car rental companies to provide high-end car service mainly for businesspeople through the Internet and mobile phone apps.
Every link in this business model chain has legal companies and services. Hence, it is hard to define it as illegal and ban it.
1. Why did taxi drivers in Shenyang block the streets with their vehicles?| A．Because they wanted to make their main complaints known to the authority. |
| B．Because they wanted to be taught how to use the taxi-hiring apps. |
| C．Because they wanted the authority to increase their driving allowances. |
| D．Because they wanted to appeal to passengers not to hire the private cars. |
| A．positive | B．unclear |
| C．neutral | D．negative |
| A．Didi Dache is a China-foreign joint company. |
| B．Apps-based car rental is functional to some degree. |
| C．The government should regulate the app-based car rental market. |
| D．The problem referred to in the passage exists in all cities. |
| A．Shenyang forbade apps-based car rental companies |
| B．Shanghai is the second city banning Didi Zhuanche |
| C．some international investment companies have strong faith in the future of apps-based car rental companies |
| D．it is not difficult to picture the apps-based car rental companies illegal |
5 . That Beijing together with Zhangjiakou succeeded in getting the chance
6 . At first glance,price-comparison websites are an example of capitalism at its best.But it has caused fierce competition on price and eviscerated profits.Towers Watson,a consultancy,said that "unnecessary" price competition following the rise of comparison sites in Britain had cost insurers ￡1 billion a year.
Consumers should celebrate that;the firms' losses are their gains.But there is a catch.Comparison sites introduce a new layer of costs,including their own advertising campaigns.In theory,competition in the market for comparison sites ought to keep those costs down.But David Ronayne of Warwick University argues that consumers often lose out from comparison sites.They earn a commission for each shopper who uses them for consumption such as buying insurance.That referral（委托）cost is included in the price the consumer ends up paying.If the increased costs outweigh the saving the comparison enables,consumers end up worse off.
These worries are not just theoretical.In 2014,Britain's competition regulator found that many comparison sites were using their contracts with retailers（零售商）to ban them from offering lower prices elsewhere.That weakened rivals' incentive（对手的动机）to cut fees,because prices on their site could not fall.By keeping prices similar,the contracts also reduced the incentive for consumers to search on multiple sites,thus helping sites retain their users.
Weaker incentives to lower commissions mean weaker incentives to lower costs,too.That might explain why comparison websites advertise so heavily,and sometimes offer free gifts to those who use them.In a recent paper,Ben Edelman of Harvard Business School and Julian Wright of the National University of Singapore argue that when a site knows that the prices merchants provide through it will always be the lowest available,it increases investment in attracting customers,safe in the knowledge that the merchants and at last consumers will bear the cost.
Is there any way to ensure the market for price comparison is competitive?Asking consumers to check multiple websites defeats the point of using them.One solution is to have only one site,but regulate it as a public utility（功用）. Alternatively,the governments could run the site itself.But creating good search and comparison sites may be too hard for them.It is much better to acknowledge that consumers will always have to do some comparison themselves to "keep the system honest".
Websites that compare the comparison sites can help,although it is easy to see how they could fall prey to the same problems.Any firm with captive users（被动用户）,be it a comparison site a search engine,or a social-media platform,can charge a high price for access to the eyes of its customers.For all their innovation,Internet middlemen are not unlike supermarkets.Shoppers would never imagine that a single store had the lowest price for all the items they need.
1. According to the first two paragraphs,price-comparison websites______.| A．will offer smart consumers the best deals |
| B．will bring insurance firms increased profits |
| C．can help keep the costs of insurance firms down |
| D．may raise the price that consumers pay for their purchases |
| A．lowering commissions | B．contracting with retailers |
| C．attracting consumers | D．cutting operating costs |
| A．it's desirable to have only one comparison site and have it run by the government |
| B．it's advisable that comparison sites with captive users charge a high price for its service |
| C．consumers should check multiple comparison sites before making a purchasing decision |
| D．websites that compare the comparison websites can help to build a competitive market |
| A．create an effective channel for smart consumers |
| B．are competition's friends and enemies at the same time |
| C．offer win-win deals between consumers and retailers |
| D．have caused a new form of competition among retailers |
