单选题 The term 'joint international business venture', joint venture for short, has come to mean many things to many people. It sometimes is taken to mean any joint relationship between one or more foreign firms and one or more local firms. Such a broad definition is excluded here. Joint venture will be taken to mean joint ownership of an operation in which at least one of the partners is foreign based.
Joint ventures can take many forms. A foreign firm may take a majority share, a minority share, or an equal share in ownership. While it is not necessary to have financial control or to have operating control, some firms refuse to use the joint venture form if it is not possible to have a majority position in ownership. There are firms that have few qualms (担忧) about holding minority position, however, so long as they can have operating control. They achieve this through technical-aid, management, or supply contracts.
It should be recognized that maintaining operating control is sometimes difficult if one does not have financial control too. Objectives of the participants may diverge (相异); when they do, financial control becomes important. Management may wish to reinvest earnings while the majority of the board may wish earnings distributed as dividends. Unless policy issues of this kind can be settled peacefully, lack of financial control can prove to be very unsatisfactory, if not fatal.
Many joint ventures emerge as matters of necessity: that is, no single firm is willing to assume the risks entailed, while a consortium (联盟) of firms is. Large, capital-intensive, long-lived investments are natural candidates for the joint venture. Exploitation of resource deposits often is done by a consortium of several petroleum or mining firms. Roles are parceled out even though each phase of the operation is owned jointly. One firm does the actual mining, another provides transportation, and still another does the refining and extraction. There is a wide variety of combinations.
Also the joint venture can pose problems, especially if it is an enforced marriage of partners. For many ventures in small countries, it is difficult to find a suitable local partner, that is, one with sufficient capital and know how to be able to contribute to the partnership. In some developing countries, a small handful of families control the entire locally-owned part of the industrial structure. Under these circumstances, a joint venture merely insulates them further from independent, foreign-owned plants that would compete against them. For this and other reasons, the only suitable partner may end up being the government itself. Most multinational firms, however, shy away from such arrangements where possible.

单选题 'Joint venture' in this passage refers to ______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】本文主要介绍了合资企业能够增强抵御风险的能力，但是也存在一定的问题，如在较小的国家寻找有充足的资金并且还懂得经营的合作者十分困难等，而解决此类问题的最好办法就是寻找政府作为合作伙伴。根据题干中的“joint venture”将本题出处定位于第1段。该段第3句中的board definition是对第2句中joint venture的定义，即any joint relationship between one or more foreign farms and one or more local firms(一个或多个外国公司和一个或多个当地公司之间构成的联合关系)，但第3句中的such a board definition is excluded here表明，本文中的joint venture指的并不是第2句对它的描述。通过该段第4句可知，在本文中joint venture 指的是joint ownership of an operation...，C项为原文的同义表达，故为答案。

单选题 Some firms may not worry about their minority position in ownership of a joint venture, but the precondition is that ______.

单选题 In what circumstance does the financial control in ownership become necessary? ______

单选题 The advantage of joint venture in this passage is that ______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】根据题干中的advantage将本题出处定位于文章第4段。该段第1句指出，许多joint ventures(合资企业)的出现有其必然性，冒号后的内容是对这一说法的解释，即没有单个的公司愿意assume the risks entailed(承担所包含的风险)，但是a consortium of firms is(企业联盟则愿意承担风险)，由此可推断，a consortium of firms愿意承担风险是因为相对于单个公司来说，企业联盟抵御风险的能力更大一些，a consortium of firms在本文中对应joint venture，故答案为B。