课程咨询

雅思备考规划

扫码添加助教免费咨询雅思备考规划

扫码关注回复雅思获取最新雅思口语题库和备考资料

剑6Test1雅思阅读原文:Passage 2

2020-09-02 14:33:22来源:网络 柯林斯词典

  提到雅思备考,我们最先想到的就是剑桥雅思真题,剑桥雅思真题作为雅思备考中的热门教材,一直以来深受广大考生追捧。今天新东方在线小编就给大家整理了剑6Test1雅思阅读原文:Passage 2,希望能都帮助大家更好的备考雅思考试,更多剑桥雅思真题原文、题目及答案解析相关内容,欢迎随时关注新东方在线雅思网

关注微信公众号,回复【剑桥1-14】,获取完整资料!

  READING PASSAGE 2

  You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

  DELIVERING THE GOODS

  The vast expansion in international trade owes much to a revolution in the business of moving freight

  A International trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that. Foreign products, from meat to machinery, play a more important role in almost every economy in the world, and foreign markets now tempt businesses that never much worried about sales beyond their nation's borders.

  B What lies behind this explosion in international commerce? The general worldwide decline in trade barriers, such as customs duties and import quotas, is surely one explanation. The economic opening of countries that have traditionally been minor players is another. But one force behind the import-export boom has passed all but unnoticed: the rapidly falling cost of getting goods to market. Theoretically, in the world of trade, shipping costs do not matter. Goods, once they have been made, are assumed to move instantly and at no cost from place to place. The real world, however, is full of frictions. Cheap labour may make Chinese clothing competitive in America, but if delays in shipment tie up working capital and cause winter coats to arrive in spring, trade may lose its advantages.

  C At the turn of the 20th century, agriculture and manufacturing were the two most important sectors almost everywhere, accounting for about 70% of total output in Germany, Italy and France, and 40-50% in America, Britain and Japan. International commerce was therefore dominated by raw materials, such as wheat, wood and iron ore, or processed commodities, such as meat and steel. But these sorts of products are heavy and bulky and the cost of transporting them relatively high.

  D Countries still trade disproportionately with their geographic neighbours. Over time, however, world output has shifted into goods whose worth is unrelated to their size and weight. Today, it is finished manufactured products that dominate the flow of trade, and, thanks to technological advances such as lightweight components, manufactured goods themselves have tended to become lighter and less bulky. As a result, less transportation is required for every dollar's worth of imports or exports.

  E To see how this influences trade, consider the business of making disk drives for computers. Most of the world's disk-drive manufacturing is concentrated in South-east Asia. This is possible only because disk drives, while valuable, are small and light and so cost little to ship. Computer manufacturers in Japan or Texas will not face hugely bigger freight bills if they import drives from Singapore rather than purchasing them on the domestic market. Distance therefore poses no obstacle to the globalisation of the disk-drive industry.

  F This is even more true of the fast-growing information industries. Films and compact discs cost little to transport, even by aeroplane. Computer software can be ‘exported' without ever loading it onto a ship, simply by transmitting it over telephone lines from one country to another, so freight rates and cargo-handling schedules become insignificant factors in deciding where to make the product. Businesses can locate based on other considerations, such as the availability of labour, while worrying less about the cost of delivering their output.

  G In many countries deregulation has helped to drive the process along. But, behind the scenes, a series of technological innovations known broadly as containerisation and intermodal transportation has led to swift productivity improvements in cargo-handling. Forty years ago, the process of exporting or importing involved a great many stages of handling, which risked portions of the shipment being damaged or stolen along the way. The invention of the container crane made it possible to load and unload containers without capsizing the ship and the adoption of standard container sizes allowed almost any box to be transported on any ship. By 1967, dual-purpose ships, carrying loose cargo in the hold* and containers on the deck, were giving way to all-container vessels that moved thousands of boxes at a time.

  H The shipping container transformed ocean shipping into a highly efficient, intensely competitive business. But getting the cargo to and from the dock was a different story. National governments, by and large, kept a much firmer hand on truck and railroad tariffs than on charges for ocean freight. This started changing, however, in the mid-1970s, when America began to deregulate its transportation industry. First airlines, then road hauliers and railways, were freed from restrictions on what they could carry, where they could haul it and what price they could charge. Big productivity gains resulted. Between 1985 and 1996, for example, America's freight railways dramatically reduced their employment, trackage, and their fleets of locomotives - while increasing the amount of cargo they hauled. Europe's railways have also shown marked, albeit smaller, productivity improvements.

  I In America the period of huge productivity gains in transportation may be almost over, but in most countries the process still has far to go. State ownership of railways and airlines, regulation of freight rates and toleration of anti-competitive practices, such as cargo-handling monopolies, all keep the cost of shipping unnecessarily high and deter international trade. Bringing these barriers down would help the world's economies grow even closer.

  * hold: ship's storage area below deck

  以上就是小编为烤鸭们整理的“剑6Test1雅思阅读原文:Passage 2”的全部内容,希望同学们能够认真学习剑桥雅思真题,早日和雅思说分手,更多剑桥雅思真题相关备考材料内容,欢迎随时关注新东方在线雅思网。




为你特别匹配的雅思超值课程,祝你和雅思分手!
  • 新东方1月雅思公开讲座

    新东方雅思1月公开讲座

    新东方教师直播教你全科技巧!

    每天1小时

    查看详情
  • 雅思机考实战

    雅思机考实战

    剑桥雅思正版题目机考实战!

    每天1小时

    查看详情
  • 雅思水平测试

    雅思水平测试

    全方位评估雅思水平

    诊断约需30分钟

    查看详情
  • 大学生雅思选课中心

    大学生雅思选课中心

    录播课|直播课|VIP小班课|一对一定制

    全科备考

    查看详情
  • 中学生雅思选课中心

    中学生雅思选课中心

    VIP小班课|录播课|直播课|一对一定制

    全科备考

    查看详情
雅思备考资料包

扫码添加助教

免费获取雅思备考资料包

更多资料
更多>>
更多内容

移动学习

二维码

2024年9月-12月雅思口语题库

扫码即可免费领取最新雅思口语题库
更多>>
更多公开讲座>>

2024年雅思考试机经

扫码免费领取【雅思考试机经】

考试机经
更多>>
更多资料