五、正误判断题（本大题共10小题，每小题2分，共20分）

Passage 1

    The term “quality” is one of the most misused in the business world. What exactly does it mean? Our grandparents would have been in no doubt. Quality meant excellence: a thing was the best of its kind, and that was that. In business, however, the word has acquired a very different meaning: consistency, a lack of defects.

    Around 1970, it is said, a group of investment analysts visited a world-famous UK engineering company. They asked the questions of their trade: about profit margins, stock control and balance sheets. The company’s executives did not see the point of all this. Their products were the finest in the world. Why all these detailed questions about numbers?

    Rolls Royce, the company in question, duly went bust in 1973. The trouble with old-style quality was that it encouraged supply-driven management. The engineers would make the product to the highest possible standard and price it accordingly. If the public was so uncultured that they turned it down, so much the worse for the public. It was all very well for artists to produce masterpieces. The job of companies was to please the market.

    Quality has a third meaning: that of value for money. To qualify for that meaning, a product must be of certain standard; and it should convey a sense, not of outright cheapness, but of being sold at a fair price.

    The US fast foods group McDonald’s, for instance, talks of its ‘high quality food’. But at 99c or 99p, its hamburgers are as close to absolute cheapness as any person in the developed world could desire. They are also highly consistent. Eat a McDonald’s anywhere around the world and the results will be roughly similar. But as anyone who has eaten a really good American hamburger knows, a McDonald’s is also a long way from quality in its original sense.

42. Quality used to mean that a product was well-made and high-priced. (      )

43. Nowadays, quality means consistency and cheap price. (      )

44. The investment analysts who visited a UK engineering company were from Rolls Royce.

(      )

45. Companies should learn from artists and produce masterpieces. (      )

46. The writer thinks that McDonald’s hamburgers are not worth the money. (      )

Passage 2

    The numbers are surprising: millions of people getting off poverty in a generation, billions of dollars in wealth created every year. In the past two decades, two out of five Indonesians escaped poverty. Asian exports went from less than one-seventh of the world total to almost 30%. No wonder people call it the Asian Economic Miracle. But to the workers and 14-hour-a-day entrepreneurs, it was nothing magical. Just plain hard work, business sense, a taste for risks, and a bit of luck.

    Today, China, Japan, India, Indonesia and South Korea are among the world’s 12 largest economies. High-profile Asian businesses like Toyota, Samsung, Hongkong Bank and Singapore Airlines are now also global giants. And the growth formula of enterprise, investment and exports has crossed borders and waters. China and other socialist economies of Asia are following the trail blazed by Japan, the newly industrialized countries (NICs) and ASEAN.

    Now Asia is re-inventing the miracle. The affluent middle class created by the boom is taking over from exports as the main engine of growth. Also adding to the thrust is infrastructure spending to support future expansion. Asian investment and trade are developing new markets and production centers right inside Asia. Japan and the NICs are passing labor-intensive sectors like garment-making over to less developed nations and moving into advanced technology and services.

    Greater wealth has brought a down side. Many Asians have abandoned their traditional diets for many types of fat-laden foods. So, in addition to becoming taller, they are also becoming fatter. And they are growing more susceptible to diseases such as diabetes. Bad eating habits combined with stress have made cancer, heart disease and strokes into major killers.

47. The workers and entrepreneurs in Asia work 14 hours a day. (      )

48. The economic development modes of the Asian countries are very different. (      )

49. The two driving forces of the new cycle of development in Asia are the rich middle class and infrastructure spending. (      )

50. The newly-industrialized countries are moving away from the labor-intensive sweatshops to the computer-aided workplaces. (      )

51. One of the next challenges Asia will face is to cope with the down side of wealth. (      )

六、翻译题（本大题12分）

52. Once, when Japan faced pressure from abroad, it would either give in reluctantly or keep quiet and hope that the fuss would die down. No longer, it seems. The Clinton administration strongly believes in exerting such pressure. Its policy is to open some Japanese markets by setting import target—an approach to trade policy that supporters call “results-oriented”. This ugly term foreshadows uncertain consequences. Far from capitulating to this new thrust of American trade policy, Japan is taking a stand that could lead to a trans-Pacific confrontation.