For months the Japanese searched fitfully for the right word to describe what was happening. At the Bank of Japan, the nation’s central bank, officials spoke of "an adjustment phase." Prime Minister admitted only to "a difficult situation." The Economic Planning Agency, the government’s record keeper, referred delicately to a "retreat." Then two weeks ago, for the first time since 1997, the agency dropped its boilerplate reference to the "expansion, from its closely watched Monthly Economic Report, and the word game was over. Japan’s economy, the world’s second largest, conceded the experts, was in recession. That admission confirmed the had news businessmen had been reading in their spreadsheets for several months. "In 2001 one market after another turned bad," says Yoshihiko Wakamoto, senior vice president of Toshiba Corp. , which now admits that its pretax profits for fiscal 2001, ending March 31, may be down a whopping 42%. In April, when many Japanese companies announce their results for 2001 fiscal Year, most will report declining profits. Blue chips like Sony, NEC and Matsushita have all experienced drops of over 40% in pretax profits. Japan’s security houses, hit by declining commissions from a falling stock market, will announce even more dramatic drops. Nomura Securities, once Japan’s most profitable company, is talking about an 80% decline in profits. Auto manufacturers, banks, airlines, steel companies, department stores —all are in a slump. Technically, what is happening to the Japanese economy does not meet American criteria for a recession, normally defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth. While economic growth has slowed in Japan, it has not ceased. Government economists are predicting a 3.5% increase in GNP for 2002. Outside experts are not so optimistic. But nearly everyone agrees that GNP growth in Japan is unlikely to slip into negative numbers, as it did last year in the U. S. and Britain. "There’s no question that we are in a recession," pronounces Kunio Miyamoto, chief economist of the Sumitomo-Life Research Institute. "But it is a recession, Japanese-style." During the last half of the 1990s, Japanese companies based much of their expansion around the world on the wildly inflated values of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Japan’s frenzied real estate market. Now both those markets have collapsed. And with long-term interest rates up from 5% to 7%, Japanese companies are less able to sell vast quantities of high-quality goods at razor-thin profit margins. Added to this are pressures from shareholders for a greater return on investments, from Japan’s trading partners for restraints on its aggressive trade practices, and from its own citizens for a reduction in their working hours so they can enjoy the fruits of 40 years of relentless toil. We learn from the text that Japanese definition of what was happening in Japan is
A. skeptical.
B. inflexible.
C. delicate.
D. changeable.
Questions 11 to 18 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
A. John mistook a test.
B. John didn’t behave well in school.
C. John was in poor physical condition.
D. John was an honest student.
It was the best of times or, depending on your political and philosophical outlook, one of the foulest and most depraved. Rebellion seemed to be leaping from city to city, continent to continent, by some fiery process of contagion. Radical students filled the streets of Mexico city, Berlin, Tokyo, Prague. In the U. S. , Chicago swirled into near anarchy as cops battled antiwar demonstrators gathered at the Democratic Convention. And everywhere from Amsterdam to Haight-Ashbury, a generation was getting high, acting up. So, clearly, it was the year from hell—a collective "dive into extensive social and personal dysfunction," as the Wall Street Journal editorialized recently. Or, depending again on your outlook, a global breakthrough for the human spirit. On this, the 25th anniversary of 1968, probably the only thing we can all agree on is that 68 marks the beginning of the "culture wars," which have divided America ever since. Both the sides of the "culture wars" of the ’80s and ’90s took form in the critical year of ’68. The key issues are different now abortion and gay rights, for example, as opposed to Vietnam and racism--but the underlying themes still echo the clashes of ’68: Diversity vs. conformity, tradition vs. iconoclasm, self-expression vs. deference to norms. "Question authority," in other words, vs. "Father knows best." The 25th anniversary of ’68 is a good time to reflect, calmly and philosophically, on these deep, underlying choices. On one hand we know that anti--authoritarianism for its own sake easily degenerates into a rude and unfocused defiance: Revolution, as Abbie Hoffman put it, "for the hell of it." Certainly ’68 had its wretched excesses as well as its moments of glory: the personal tragedy of lives undone by drugs and sex, the heavy cost of riots and destruction. One might easily conclude that the ancient rules and hierarchies are there for a reason--they’re worked, more or less, for untold millenniums, so there’s no point in changing them now. But it’s also true that what "worked" for thousands of years may not be the best way of doing things. Democracy, after all, was once a far-out, subversive notion, condemned by kings and priests. In our own country, it took all kinds of hell-raising, including a war, to get across the simple notion that no person is morally entitled to own another. One generation’s hallowed tradition--slavery, or the divine right of kings--may be another generation’s object lesson in human folly. ’68 was one more awkward, stumbling, half step forward in what Dutschke called the "long march" toward human freedom. Actually, it helped inspire the worldwide feminist movement. To which of the following is the writer most likely to agree
A war brings with it nothing but destruction.
B. It is wise to see the ’68 War into perspective.
C. Revolution leaves a new generation acting up.
D. Ancient rules are by all means reasonable.
For months the Japanese searched fitfully for the right word to describe what was happening. At the Bank of Japan, the nation’s central bank, officials spoke of "an adjustment phase." Prime Minister admitted only to "a difficult situation." The Economic Planning Agency, the government’s record keeper, referred delicately to a "retreat." Then two weeks ago, for the first time since 1997, the agency dropped its boilerplate reference to the "expansion, from its closely watched Monthly Economic Report, and the word game was over. Japan’s economy, the world’s second largest, conceded the experts, was in recession. That admission confirmed the had news businessmen had been reading in their spreadsheets for several months. "In 2001 one market after another turned bad," says Yoshihiko Wakamoto, senior vice president of Toshiba Corp. , which now admits that its pretax profits for fiscal 2001, ending March 31, may be down a whopping 42%. In April, when many Japanese companies announce their results for 2001 fiscal Year, most will report declining profits. Blue chips like Sony, NEC and Matsushita have all experienced drops of over 40% in pretax profits. Japan’s security houses, hit by declining commissions from a falling stock market, will announce even more dramatic drops. Nomura Securities, once Japan’s most profitable company, is talking about an 80% decline in profits. Auto manufacturers, banks, airlines, steel companies, department stores —all are in a slump. Technically, what is happening to the Japanese economy does not meet American criteria for a recession, normally defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth. While economic growth has slowed in Japan, it has not ceased. Government economists are predicting a 3.5% increase in GNP for 2002. Outside experts are not so optimistic. But nearly everyone agrees that GNP growth in Japan is unlikely to slip into negative numbers, as it did last year in the U. S. and Britain. "There’s no question that we are in a recession," pronounces Kunio Miyamoto, chief economist of the Sumitomo-Life Research Institute. "But it is a recession, Japanese-style." During the last half of the 1990s, Japanese companies based much of their expansion around the world on the wildly inflated values of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Japan’s frenzied real estate market. Now both those markets have collapsed. And with long-term interest rates up from 5% to 7%, Japanese companies are less able to sell vast quantities of high-quality goods at razor-thin profit margins. Added to this are pressures from shareholders for a greater return on investments, from Japan’s trading partners for restraints on its aggressive trade practices, and from its own citizens for a reduction in their working hours so they can enjoy the fruits of 40 years of relentless toil. The decline of Japanese economy in 2001 is manifested in the fact that the Japanese
A. companies predicted their results for another fiscal year.
B. auto industries went bankrupt in a Japanese style.
C. security houses suffered great loss of their profits.
D. real estate market quieted down after a boom.