问答题Asians see the United States losing its undisputed international influence in 50 years to possibly China amid waning trust in Washington to act responsibly in the world, a poll showed. The study is carried out by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA), an independent US think tank. In the immediate term, US power in the eyes of Asians remains secure. In haft a century, however, a majority in all countries covered by the poll—China, India, South Korea and the United States—believed "another nation" will become as powerful or surpass the United States in power. China has become a global manufacturing power and is already displacing the United States as the primary trading partner for many nations. China has also amassed the world's largest trade surplus and world's largest foreign exchange reserves.

问答题"Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China" is etched into the glossy black of every iPhone. The designer is mourned and deified the world over, but the assemblers are huddled in anonymity. Indeed, the story of Apple’s rise over the last decade is as much America’s story as it is China’s. If Steve Jobs was the general who led the battle for global digital technology supremacy, then it took hundreds of thousands of his troops in factory overalls and to realize his vision with precision and consistency. 　　But kneading innovation in the abstract in Cupertino was realized as tangible devices in city-sized factory in Shenzhen, China. Commercialization of the sophisticated products, while successively lowering prices, would’ve been impossible without China’s essential role. The Chinese factory worker’s role in the Apple story should not obscure Steve Jobs monumental achievements as an innovator. Nor should those workers’ roles be marginalized in the breathless paeans to Jobs’s almost-mythical legend. As a matter of fact---many of the stories that germinate in Silicon Valley usually find their denouement in Shenzhen or nearby factory towns.

问答题以往几个世纪人口的增长并不能证明人口会无限地直线向上增长直到毁灭的地步。相反地，人口统计史料证明人口的增长完全不是一成不变的。若技术革新的成果开始减少，从250到350年前就在西方开通出现的并且目前还在继续的人口迅速增长可能也会放慢。当然，当前的知识革命也许会持续下去而无法预见其未来。无论如何，与那种认为人口以几何级数持续增长的观点相反，从长远的观点来说，人口可望受到生产力的调节。接受了这一观点，人口的增长就右以被看成是经济进步和人类胜利的标志，而不是社会衰败的标志。

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问答题What is leadership? Its qualities are difficult to define. But they are not so difficult to identify. Leaders don't force other people to go along with them. They bring them along. Leaders get commitment from others by giving it themselves, by building an environment that encourages creativity, and by operating with honesty and fairness. Good leaders aren't "lone rangers." They recognize that an organization's strategies for success require the combined talents and efforts of many people. Leadership is the catalyst for transforming those talents into results. Leaders provide answers as well as direction, offer strength as well as dedication, and speak from experience as well as understanding of the problems they face and the people they work with. Leaders are flexible rather than dogmatic. They believe in unity rather than yielding. And they strive to achieve agreements out of conflict. Leadership is all about getting people consistently to give their best, helping them to grow to their fullest potential, and motivating them to work toward a common good. Leaders make the right things happen when they're supposed to.

问答题中国加入世界贸易组织的谈判已经进行了15年。中国的立场始终如一。加入世界贸易组织后，中国将有步骤地扩大商品和服务贸易领域的对外开放，为国内外企业创造公开、统一、平等竞争的条件，建立和健全符合国际经济通行规则、符合中国国情的对外经济贸易体制，为国外企业来华进行经贸合作提供更多、更稳定的市场准入机会。中国加入世界贸易组织，将为中国和亚洲以及世界各国各地区经济的发展注入新的活力，中国人民将从中受益，亚洲和世界各国人民也将从中受益。

问答题 An army scientist has helped solve the decades-old murder mystery surrounding the last Russian czar. The bones unearthed in a shallow grave definitely are those of Czar Nicholas II, said Lt. Col (Dr.) Victor Weedn at an Aug. 31 news conference. Weedn heads the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md., which is involved in identifying skeletal remains of U. S. service members who served in Vietnam, Korea and World War II. The attempt to identify the czar presented a special challenge. The armed forces lab was the perfect place to perform the type of genetic testing on old, deteriorating bones that was needed in this case, he said. Until the announcement, scientists had not been able to say for sure whether the bones were those of the czar. Russian DNA expert Pavel Ivanov, who with Weedn oversaw a team of U. S. military civilians tasked to identify the remains, reached the same conclusion. Nicholas and his family were rounded up by the Bolsheviks and executed by firing squad in 1918. Their bodies were dumped into a pool of sulfuric acid 20 miles outside the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg. The shallow grave was uncovered in 1979. Bone fragments believed to be those of the czar, the Czarina Alexandra and three of their five children were unearthed in 1991. While investigators were able to positively identify the czarina and the daughters early on, a rare, benign genetic condition that first showed up in his generation did not allow them to make a positive identification of Nicholas II. Rare mutation the key In the end, it was that genetic mutation which provided the key to solving the mystery, Weedn said. Nicholas' brother, whose remains were exhumed in July 1994, turned out to have the same mutation in his genetic makeup. It is so rare that it makes the identification absolute, he said. If Russian authorities accept that finding, it will clear the way for the ceremonial burial of the last emperor of Russia. But the new evidence did not satisfy all skeptics. Emigre Eugene Magerovsky, a retired Russian military intelligence officer, interrupted the news conference to say he was suspicious of how the bones "suddenly" came to light during the Soviet era. "The Soviets have always been masters of all kinds of shenanigans," he said. He suggested the investigators may have been given two bones from the same corpse, in which case the DNA would have had to match. Weedn ruled that out, as the tibia and femur from the same side of each body were used in the testing. Ivanov, a forensic science professor in charge of identifying the remains of the last czar and his family, brought the femur bones—as well as a blood sample from a living relative— to the Rockville laboratory in June. Much evidence lost Years of exposure to minerals in the soil destroyed much of the genetic evidence in the bone, Weedn said. Still, through a painstaking process of grinding up bone, reproducing the genetic material from the dust and comparing the results over and over again, the team was able to reach its conclusion. One mystery Weedn and Ivanov did not address was that of the czar's daughter, Anastasia. Whether she somehow escaped the Bolsheviks' bullets has been the topic of intense debate for more than half a century. The grave yielded bones from only three of the five daughters. Still unresolved is whether Anastasia or Marie might have survived, along with the sickly heir, Alexis. Weedn, whose laboratory has tested two women who claimed to be Anastasia, found they were not. A third who sought testing has not sent in blood samples for testing, he added. On-again, off-again pairing Weedn was approached by Ivanov four years ago about becoming involved in the DNA testing of Nicholas II. But his team—including some FBI experts—was replaced by another team of top civilian American forensic scientists. In addition, the British Forensic Science Service in 1992 determined there was a 98.5 percent probability the bones were the czar's. Weedn and Ivanov's paths crossed again two years later, when another joint investigation was proposed. But that, too, failed to materialize, Weedn said. Finally, earlier this year, the Russians approached the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and asked whether Ivanov could come and work with Weedn at the Rockville laboratory. "There is no question that the greatest experience in DNA identification of old skeletal remains is here at the Armed Forces DNA Lab," Weedn said.

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问答题The lives of most men are determined by their environment. They accept the circumstances amid which fate has thrown them not only with resignation but even with good will. They are like streetcars running contentedly on their rails and they despise the sprightly flivver that dashes in and out of the traffic and speeds so jauntily across the open country. I respect them; they are good citizens, good husbands, good fathers, and of course somebody has to pay the taxes; but I do not find them exciting. I am fascinated by the men, few enough in all conscience, who take life in their own hands and seem to mould it to their own liking. It may be that we have no such thing as free will, but at all events we have the illusion of it. At a crossroad it does seem to us that we might go either to the right or the left and, once the choice is made, it is difficult to see that the whole course of the world"s history obliged us to take the turning we did.

问答题 The German Train Drivers' Union (GDL), the country's oldest, used to be among its most obscure. That changed in July when its feisty leader, Manfred Schell, rejected an agreement between Deutsche Bahn, the main railway company, and the bulk of its workforce. His members, he said, deserve a big rise in their "miserable pay"—up to 31%, the union has hinted. The threat of an economy-crippling strike, which could happen as early as August 28th, is shocking enough. Still more is GDL's challenge to Germany's tradition of trade-union solidarity. Big unions are appalled by the prospect of some workers snatching better pay and conditions from weaker fellows. Employers accustomed to labour peace fret that Germany will face "English conditions" of rival unions competing by striking. GDL is not the first to break ranks. In 1999 airline pilots pulled out from DAG, the white-collar employees' union, to fight for their own deals. Six years later doctors abandoned an alliance with ver.di, a grouping formed by the merger of five service-sector unions, to strike for a bigger pay rise than the behemoth could win for them. GDL's defection seems to confirm the unravelling of a system based on umbrella labour contracts for whole industries or firms. Companies complain that such contracts subvert competitiveness by imposing similar conditions regardless of size or strength. But they lose fewer work days to strikes than European rivals. Germany's prowess in manufacturing, rare for a rich country, may be due in part to the security such contracts provide. Is that about to change? A separate deal for GDL would have "huge consequences for the next round" of labour negotiations, says Hans-Joachim Schabedoth, head of policy planning for the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), the main union umbrella group. "Wage disputes will become harder to settle.' Yet GDL's behaviour probably threatens workers more than employers. German employment is recovering after years of stagnation and some trades are starting to benefit. Even so, recovery will not restore unions' self-confidence or the relative equality among workers (in West Germany, at least) that prevailed before German unification in 1990. Instead, growing prosperity may be accompanied by a bitter quarrel over how to divide it. Things have been going badly for the big trade unions ever since the fizzling in the mid- 1990s of the unification boom. Growth slowed, unemployment soared and workers in newly capitalist eastern Europe stole German jobs. Since 1991 the DGB has lost 44% of its members. Employers exploited unions' weakness by demanding opt-out clauses in labour contracts and sometimes dispensing with them altogether. Collective agreements now cover 65% of workers in western Germany, compared with 76% in 1998, says Reinhard Bispinck of the Hans-B6ckler Foundation, the DGB's research arm. Workers' flexibility made the recovery possible. Companies "drove up productivity tremendously by having docile and productive unions," says Anke Hassel of the Hertie School of Governance, a private university. And now some are benefiting. Metal-bashing and electronics firms have added 85,000 jobs since employment hit bottom in April 2006. IG Metall, that industry's union, won a pay rise of over 4% for June 2007-October 2008. "Employees are no longer prepared to accept (hourly) wage increases much below the long- term average" of about 2(作图)%, says Eekart Tuchtfeld, an economist at Commerzbank. But high-productivity sectors, particularly manufacturing, will gain more than less-productive services. Global competition will continue to pressure wages overall. "The underlying situation will not change," says Mr. Tuchtfeld. Under the constitution, unions and employers are autonomous and disputes have been resolved by the courts. But breakaway unions make it more difficult for courts to defend one union's right to negotiate on behalf of a company's entire workforce. The right to strike may now have to be regulated by law, Mr. Schabedoth believes. Another statutory fix, championed especially by ver. di, is a proposed minimum wage of 7.50 an hour. The sense of crisis may ebb if mediators appointed by GDL and Deutsche Bahn manage to avoid a separate contract for GDL's drivers. But that will not solve the underlying problem. the discovery, as Germany recovers from its slump, that some workers are more equal than others.

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问答题Explain the expression "the management horse pulling the IT cart" in the 9th paragraph.

问答题What does the author mean by the question "why should anyone applaud" in the last paragraph?

问答题维护世界和平，促进共同发展，是各国人民的共同心愿。中国人民愿与各国人民一道，推动建立公正合理的国际政治经济新秩序，提倡国际关系民主化，尊重世界多样性，促进树立新安全观，努力实现全球经济均衡可持续发展。中国人民对世界上仍陷于战火、冲突、饥饿、贫困等苦难的人民怀着深切同情，衷心祝愿他们早日走上和平发展之路，并愿为他们提供力所能及的帮助。我相信，只要各国人民和有远见的政治家，从人类的前途命运和共同利益出发，以合作谋和平，以合作促发展，携手克服前进道路上的困难，我们就一定能够共同创造人类的美好未来。

问答题Questions 4～6 They weren"t exactly Hollywood"s idea of a power couple: Disney CEO Robert Iger, once derided as a "suit", and studio chief Richard Cook, who got his start as a monorail operator at Disneyland. But last week Iger and Cook dropped a bomb bigger than any of the explosions you"ll see in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man"s Chest. Just weeks after the record-smashing release of the sequel—soon to be the highest-grossing film in Disney history—Cook fired studio president Nina Jacobson and announced Disney was slashing 20 percent of its studio staff and cutting the number of films it makes each year by a third. As usual, Hollywood thought it was all about them. "People are concerned that if Disney is cutting back on live-action movies, then what are other companies going to do," says Jim Wiatt, chief executive of the William Morris Agency. The unflappable Iger"s response: "We"re focused on our own issues and strategies. If it has an effect on the industry, so be it. But it really is about us. " Not bad for two guys who were considered perpetual bridesmaids. Iger and Cook both spent years toiling in the shadow of larger-than-life CEO Michael Eisner, who ran Disney like his personal kingdom. When Eisner"s reign came to a Shakespearean end after a shareholder revolt led by Walt Disney"s nephew, Iger found himself having to audition for his boss"s job. Cook, who came up through the marketing ranks, had to endure similar Tinseltown tongue-clucking from those who assumed the affable bear of a guy who didn"t have teeth. No one"s saying Iger and Cook aren"t "sexy" anymore. In short order, Iger made up with shareholders and Pixar honcho Steve Jobs, who"d had an epic battle with Eisner, even persuading Jobs to sell the animation company to Disney. Cook, meanwhile, had been turning theme-park rides into movies and getting Disney back to its family roots. "Dick and Bob go by their own beat," says Oren Aviv, who was promoted to president of production last week. "They"re not interested in fanfare or press or what other people think." (Mostly not interested: Iger did tell Newsweek once, "I hate being called a suit.") What people think now is that Disney is setting the pace for the industry. The film business has been on shaky ground: U.S. box office is flat, DVD sales have stalled and the cost of making movies is soaring. Family films seem like the only sure bets these days, and Disney is in a prime position to meet the demand. "Disney is the only real brand name in the movie business around the world," says Cook. In fact, Iger is taking the name "Disney World" quite literally. He spoke to Newsweek Friday after flying home from a five-day trip to Asia, where he attended the stage premiere of The Lion King in Shanghai. His immediate goal is to build the Disney brand in China and India. Iger has also aggressively embraced technological advances, podcasting and webcasting episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives, hits on Disney"s ABC network. "I don"t see technology as a threat," he says. "Technology allows us to be in step with the consumer. " All of which sounds pretty good to Wall Street. Last week"s cuts will save the company between $ 90 million and $100 million a year, according to Cook, and while that wasn"t enough to boost its stock price, it sure doesn"t hurt investor relations. "Iger has stated his goals and stuck to [them]; investors like that predictability," says analyst Jason Helfstein of CIBC World Markets. "He"s widely regarded in a positive light." Ironic, since he wasn"t supposed to have the job in the first place.

问答题The effect of governmental expenditures on the total economy varies with both the level of utilization of labor and capital in the economy at the time of the expenditure, and the segment of the economy which receives the expenditure. If the economy as a whole or the segment of the economy which is the focus of the expenditure is operating at capacity or close to capacity, then the expenditure"s major effects will tend to be inflationary, and will not generate much employment of capital and labor. If the economy or sector is operating at much less than full employment, the expenditure will produce a genuine (non-inflationary) rise in the GNP. A true measure of the effect of governmental increase in the amount of money made available, then, is not the simple dollar value of the initial injection but the cumulative effect of this injection through spending and re-spending. In the optimum case the initial expansion of income flow could be great enough to produce tax revenues in excess of the original "deficit spending" or the "tax cut", so that deficits are not only smaller than the increased GNP but are recouped. In Keynesian economics the fundamental point of government policy clearly is not budget-balancing but spending in the event of unused productive capacity and unemployment. Spending increases productivity. This productivity resulting from federal spending has overwhelmed the older economic myths of the balanced budget where government is conceived of as just another business firm.