2014年考研英语阅读精选

　Hungary steps out 　　Jan 3rd 2012, 15:45 by A.L.B. | BUDAPEST

　　THE symbolism was telling. Inside Budapest's Opera House, Hungary’s great and good were knocking back sparkling wine at a gala event to celebrate the inauguration of the country’s new constitution, which came into effect on January 1st. Outside, on Andrássy Avenue, tens of thousands of protestors demanded its withdrawal.

　　Brushing off the demonstrations, President Pal Schmitt hailed Hungary’s new "basic law" as a brave new dawn. It may well be, but probably not the kind that Hungary’s rulers are hoping for. As the blog Contrarian Hungarian reports, protestors are increasingly taking control of the streets. The Andrássy Avenue march was just the latest in a series of public actions against the government's growing autocratic tendencies and its relentless centralisation of power.

　　Monday’s protests were significant as well as symbolic. This was the first time that opposition parties—the Socialists, the Democratic Coalition and the green-liberal LMP—had joined forces with street activists. Peter Konya, leader of the Hungarian Solidarity Movement, welcomed what he called “the long absent co-operation between civil groups and parties of the democratic opposition”.

　　Gabor Ivanyi, a Methodist pastor, told the crowd that “There is no truth where laws are passed forcefully, without consultations, where people live in fear and where people are not equal.” Mr Ivanyi is one of 13 former dissidents and liberal politicians to have signed a letter calling for the European Union to intervene and protect Hungarian democracy.

　　Government officials deny that Hungarian democracy is in danger. How, they ask, can this be so when an enormous crowd is free to demonstrate outside the very building where they are celebrating? In 2010 the right-wing Fidesz party won a two-thirds parliamentary majority in a free and fair election, they argue, and the government is simply fulfilling its mandate of radical change and renewal.

　　But as the government brushes off requests from the EU, the IMF, the European Central Bank and the United States to reconsider key legislation that may be in breach of its international treaty obligations, such arguments sound increasingly unconvincing. 考研阅读精选：中国入世十年回想当年

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　　Ten years of China in the WTO

　　Shades of grey

　　It was right to let China in. Now the world’s biggest trader needs to grow up

　　Dec 10th 2011 | from the print edition

　　CHINA’S efforts to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dragged on for 15 years, long enough to “turn black hair white”, as Zhu Rongji, China’s former prime minister, put it. (His own hair remained Politburo-black throughout.) Even after membership was granted, ten years ago this week, Mr Zhu expected many “headaches”, including the loss of customs duties and the distress of farmers exposed to foreign competition.

　　 Yet the bet paid off for China. It has blossomed into the world’s greatest exporter and second-biggest importer. The marriage of foreign know-how, Chinese labour and the open, global market has succeeded beyond anyone’s predictions.

　　 It is instead China’s trading partners who now contemplate its WTO membership with furrowed brows (see article). They have a variety of complaints: that China exports too much, swamping their markets with cheap manufactured goods, subsidised by an undervalued currency; that it hoards essential inputs, such as rare earths, for its own firms; and that it still skews its own market against foreign companies, in some cases by being slow to implement WTO rules (notably on piracy), in others by suddenly imposing unwritten rules that are unfavourable or unknowable to foreigners. The meddling state lets multinationals in, only to squeeze them dry of their valuable technologies and then push them out.

　　 Much of this criticism is right. China made heroic reforms in the years around its WTO entry. That raised expectations that it has conspicuously failed to meet. It signed up for multilateral rules, but neglected the rule of law at home. Free trade did not bring wider freedoms, and even the trade was not exactly free. It is in China’s interest to liberalise its exchange rate further, to prevent local officials from discriminating against foreigners and above all to do far more to support the global trading system. The WTO is undermined when any member flouts the rules, never mind one as big as China.

　　 Too big to be a bystander—or to be kept out

　　 But China’s sins should be put into perspective. In terms of global trade consumers everywhere have gained from cheap Chinese goods. Chinese growth has created a huge market for other countries’ exports. And China’s remaining barriers are often exaggerated. It is more open to imports than Japan was at the same stage of development, more open to foreign direct investment than South Korea was until the 1990s. Its tariffs are capped at 10% on average; Brazil’s at over 30%. And in China, unlike India, you can shop at Walmart, most of the time.

　　 As for the hurdles foreign firms face in China, they are disgraceful—but sadly no worse than in other developing countries. The grumbles are louder in China chiefly because the stakes are higher. Foreigners may have won a smaller slice of China’s market than they had hoped, but China is a bigger pie than anyone dared to expect. Had China been kept out of the WTO, there would have been less growth for everybody. And the WTO still provides the best means to discipline and cajole. Rather than delivering congressional ultimatums, America and others could make more use of the WTO’s rules to curb China’s worst infractions.

　　 So celebrate China’s ten years in the WTO: we are all richer because of it. But, when it comes to trade, China’s rulers now badly need to grow up. Their cheating is harming their own consumers and stoking up protectionism abroad. That could prove to be economic self-harm on an epic scale. 　Nuns and contraception

　　Praying for the Pill

　　Dec 9th 2011, 14:48 by C.H. | NEW YORK

THE Catholic church condemns all forms of contraception, a policy that Paul VI laid out in detail in Humanae Vitae in 1968. Over the subsequent decades it has had various brawls with secular authorities over the use of birth control pills. Most recently, America’s bishops have fought to keep Barack Obama’s health law from providing contraception free. The church has already won an exemption for women who work for a church, but it also wants to keep coverage from women who work for any Catholic institution, even if the women in question are not Catholics and the institution has a secular purpose, such as a school, say, or hospital. Given all this, it would seem unlikely that the church would want to give the Pill to its nuns. Yet that is precisely what a recent paper in the Lancet suggests. Its authors, Kara Britt and Roger Short, of Monash University and the University of Melbourne, urge the Church to provide oral contraception to the sisters. Nuns need the Pill not to prevent pregnancy, but to prevent cancer.

In 1713, the authors write, an Italian doctor observed that nuns had a very high rate of that “accursed pest”, breast cancer. Modern studies have confirmed that Catholic have a higher risk than most women of dying from breast, ovarian and uterine cancers. Women who bear children have fewer menstrual cycles, thanks to both pregnancy and lactation (which suppresses menstruation). Other studies have established a relationship between menstrual cycles and the prevalence of cancer, with fewer cycles meaning a smaller risk. Nuns - who are required to be celibate - experience more cycles than the typical woman, and therefore run a higher risk of developing cancer.

The Pill can help to counteract this. The overall mortality in women who use, or have used, oral contraception, is 12% lower than among those who do not. The effect on ovarian and endometrial cancer is greater: the risk of such cancers plummets by about 50%. Drs Britt and Short make a compelling medical case. But it is unlikely to sway the Church. 　Mobile games in South Korea

　　RegulationVille

　　Dec 5th 2011, 15:30 by D.T. | SEOUL

　　SOUTH KOREA is the world leader in online games. Eager young nerds from around the world have even been known to move to Seoul to ply their trade as professional gamers. “E-sports” masters who reach the top in Korea can earn six-figure incomes and find their pictures plastered on the bedroom walls of fans. There are over 1,000 game-making firms in Korea, and more than 19,000 “PC-bangs” (internet cafés, pictured) in which the top titles are played.

　　 Yet the nascent market for mobile games—those played on smartphones—has not really taken off, despite the fact that 17 million Koreans are proud owners of Android phones, a further 4 million have iPhones and the country is the world’s second biggest consumer of apps overall.

　　 The reason is regulation: Korean law requires all computer games to be approved by a “Game Review Board” prior to release. This is bad enough for regular game developers. But for those who make mobile games, it was an insurmountable barrier. App-based games tend to be short-lived, simple, and very numerous; required fees and approval waiting times made it difficult for small independent developers to prosper. And for Google, whose Android Market is the main way to distribute mobile games, it was a bureaucratic nightmare: the firm did not bother selling such apps in Korea until now.

　　 So it was great news for young and promising mobile games industry when the South Korean authorities decided to exempt their wares from the review process: since early last week game addicts have been able to get their mobile fix. For a desperate few, this may have come just in time: legislation banning under-16 year-olds from playing online games between midnight and 6am has just come into effect. 　Home away from home 　　The existence of the most Earthlike planet yet has just been confirmed

　　Dec 10th 2011 | from the print edition

　　ONE of the more memorable slogans to come out of the climate-change talks in Durban over the past few days is: “there is no planet B”. But what if there were? Over the past couple of decades astronomers have logged thousands of so-called “exoplanets”—worlds which orbit stars other than the sun. On December 5th the scientists in charge of Kepler, a space telescope designed to look for such planets, confirmed their instrument’s discovery of its first Earthlike world. It is dubbed, rather unromantically, Kepler 22b.

　　The existence of this planet, which circles a star 600 light-years away, in the constellation of Lyra, had previously been suspected. Kepler, which belongs to NASA, America’s space agency, works by observing dips in a star’s brightness as a planet passes in front of it. It flags likely looking reductions as “candidate planets”, of which Kepler 22b was one. But three passes are needed to confirm a planet’s existence, and Kepler 22b has now passed this test. Crucially, it orbits well within its star’s “Goldilocks zone”: neither too close nor too far away for liquid water (and therefore, perhaps, life) to exist on its surface.

　　It joins two other Earthlike planets—Gliese 581d and HD 85512 b—discovered by another instrument within the past few years. In truth, the term “Earthlike” is a stretch. Kepler 22b has a radius 2.4 times that of Earth, and if it is made from roughly the same stuff its surface gravity will also be about 2.4 times as strong. But NASA’s astronomers remain unsure whether it is predominantly gaseous, liquid or solid.

　　Nevertheless, Kepler 22b is the most promising exoplanet yet found. Unlike the others, which skirt the edges of their stars’ Goldilocks zones, Kepler 22b orbits comfortably within its own. NASA’s researchers reckon its surface temperature is about 22°C, compared with 15°C (at least for now) on Earth. Its parent star is similar to the sun, again unlike those of the other two candidates, both of which orbit cooler, dimmer stars. Indeed Gliese 581d’s parent is a red dwarf—the tiniest stellar species. That means its Goldilocks zone is so close to it that the planet may be tidally locked, as the moon is to the Earth. If that were the case, one side of Gliese 581d would be permanently lit (and heated) while the other experienced unending darkness.

　　These three potentially habitable exoplanets may soon be joined by many more. In the two and a half years since its launch, Kepler has spotted 2,326 candidate planets. About 650 others have been discovered by other instruments. That plethora allows astronomers to start drawing conclusions about how common various sorts of planets are. Of Kepler’s haul, 9% seem to be of a similar size to Earth (though not all are in the Goldilocks zone of their star); a further 29% are Super Earths—planets substantially larger than Earth that are nevertheless rocky. Forty-eight of Kepler’s unconfirmed candidates look as if they orbit within their stars’ habitable zones; of those, ten seem to be Earth-sized.

　　The ultimate goal, of course, is to let astronomers make a plausible estimate of the total number of planets in the galaxy, of the number that could conceivably support life, and of the fraction of those that could (at least in theory) sustain human colonists. If only a few of Kepler’s possible Earthlike planets turn out to be real, that third number is likely to be in the millions.

　　Such knowledge will mark an historic transition, says Chris Lintott, an astronomer at Oxford University who is giving the Kepler team a hand with the data analysis, since the uncertainties around the question of whether life exists elsewhere will cease to be astronomical (how many suitable planets are there?) and become purely biological (how easy is it for life to get going, and how easy is it for it to become intelligent?). Based on the preliminary data, it looks as if there are numerous suitable planets. The science of exobiology may soon cease to be an oxymoron. 　FINDING THE VALUE IN PERFUME

　　Buy a bottle of perfume and you could pay as much for its advertising as its contents. The Sceptical Shopper sniffs out some niche alternatives ...

　　From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2012

　　Wearing scent is one of life’s pleasures. Humans have been dousing themselves in concoctions of olfactive molecules since at least the Bronze Age, and any habit that persistent has to have something going for it. Yet it does seem odd that most of the time we mask our own, genetically unique smell with others so widely available you can catch a whiff of them in cities across the planet: Opium on the streets of Barcelona, Eternity in Istanbul.

　　Heavily advertised, widely worn perfumes can smell good. But buy one and a fair proportion of your cash will go on its marketing, not on its contents. All those portentous, mini-movie perfume ads—filled with celebrity models running (presumably so they don’t have to spoil the effect by speaking) towards romantic assignations through increasingly rococo sets—don’t come anything close to cheap. Not only this, but such perfumes are vital money-makers for fashion brands, so they are almost without exception made to a price. When profit is put before pong, the results tend to be one-dimensional scents, made of cheap ingredients, that smell the same on everyone. Perhaps most irritating is that this instant recognisability is in fact a bonus for the big manufacturers. It turns you into a walking advert for their product—and unlike those celebrity models, you’re not getting paid.

　　Unfortunately, having a bespoke perfume made just for you will cost upwards of £600 for 100ml of eau de parfum (the most concentrated form of perfume), whereas a similar volume of a globally available brand typically costs £70. So it might be worth considering the middle ground—what you might call niche perfumes, which tend to cost anything from £80-£350 for 100ml. These are produced on a small scale, often by individual “noses” rather than existing fashion labels, have a negligible or non-existent advertising spend, and you won’t smell them wafting down every high street.

　　What, if any, is the actual difference? Most perfumes are a combination of top, middle and bass notes—scented ingredients ranked according to their volatility. Citrus smells, the commonest top notes, are highly volatile and disappear fast. Resinous base-note ingredients, such as myrrh or benzoin, last for many hours. Notes may be natural, or synthetic; the finest, hardest-to-harvest natural notes, such as aoud, or Grasse jasmine, can cost, ounce for ounce, more than gold. Don’t turn your nose up at synthetics, however: they can mimic existing smells that can’t be captured directly—lilac, for instance—or smell, literally, like nothing on earth.

　　Mass-market perfumes often nab you from the first sniff—they put all the bang into their top notes, because they want an instant sale. Niche perfumes are more complicated: like little stories in a bottle, their narrative unfolds throughout the day as the particular heat and microflora of your skin affect their layered ingredients. But you have to learn to love them. Without exception, of all the niche perfumes I tried for this article, it was those I at first disliked that most grew on me. When I first dabbed on Juliette Has a Gun’s Not a Perfume (£79/100ml), I was nonplussed. Six hours later I wanted to eat myself. E. Coudray’s Nohiba (£58/100ml)? Cloying and sweet when first on, wonderfully sexy after a few hours. Nez à Nez’s Atelier d’Artiste, £105/100ml? Hated it on the blotter, but loved it on my skin: so complex I felt like I was watching a film. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather watch a film than be an advert. 　Master of ping-ping diplomacy

　　Dec 14th 2011, 9:35 by G.E. | BEIJING

　　IT IS not often that an ambassador to China who leaves his post chooses to hold forth—on the record, and on Chinese soil—about the ups and downs of his former job. This is true for at least two reasons. First, Chinese government officials here are not exactly thick-skinned (nor short of memory). Second, those with future business here, whether diplomatic or more remunerative, tend to say nice things or nothing at all.

　　Few diplomats understand that better than Geoff Raby, who from 2007 until this summer served as Australia’s ambassador to China. He now runs an eponymous consultancy in Beijing that trades on the connections he established over a career that took him to China in the 1980s, back to Canberra and back again. Little wonder that Mr Raby would hesitate to tread on those relationships in Beijing last night, when he addressed a gathering of foreign correspondents who sought to induce him into undiplomatic utterances.

　　Mr Raby, though outspoken, has a diplomat’s flair for strategic candour. The most undiplomatic broadside he delivered while he was ambassador was targeted at his own boss, Kevin Rudd—the Mandarin-speaking minister of foreign affairs whose tenure as prime minister was marked by rocky relations with China. Speaking earlier this year to a gathering of Australian executives in Beijing, Mr Raby observed, among a series of remarks that were clearly aimed at Mr Rudd, that “to speak Chinese is not to know China”.

　　Mr Rudd was prime minister during what Mr Raby described last night as the annus horribilis of Sino-Australian relations, the year of 2009. That was a time in which China was baring its fangs diplomatically, on the heels of ethnically charged riots in the northwest region of Xinjiang that summer and in Tibet a year earlier. Mr Raby recalled how Chinese diplomats ham-fistedly objected to the scr