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Buick in China
The first Buick model off the line was just the beginning of General Motors' long march into the Chinese market. A total of 23,000 cars rolled out of the factory in 1999．This year, Shanghai GM Buick aims to produce 50,000 cars.
It is interesting to review the long negotiations with the Chinese government to set up Shanghai GM Buick. The biggest issue was who would supply the car parts and how the parts would get from the factory to the Buick plant.
A car is made up of more than 30,000 parts. Parts manufacturers in China don't have the technological know-how to make all the necessary parts. Therefore, at the beginning, about half the necessary parts will be shipped to Shanghai from North America. These parts are made at GM's Tillsonburg Ontario facility. The trains carry the parts over 3,000 miles to the Port of Vancouver. From Vancouver, the parts are shipped to Shanghai. All told, the door-to-door delivery time is 17 days. But there may be a 42-day delay between steel plates leaving the steel works in America and arriving in Shanghai. To prevent the long-distance shipping and delay, Shanghai GM Buick has asked Shanghai Baoshan steelworks to produce plates of similar quality.
"Imported car parts are our biggest headache," says Jay Hunt. "local suppliers are very responsive. " To our surprise, however, the cost of localized production is much higher than buying from overseas. The reason is that although labor costs are low in China, wages comprise only 20% of the cost of producing car parts. Small-scale production in China makes production costs very high. The deputy general manager, Laurence Zahner said, "Only if the price of domestic parts drops 30% shall we be able to qualify for the international market. "
Thankfully, a solution has appeared. Foreign car parts makers are coming to the Yangtse River Delta to set up joint ventures. Shanghai GM Buick will depend on those parts makers for car parts. Perhaps the Buick plant will not worry about the agreement with the Chinese partner any longer. The agreement says that in the first year of production, the Buick plant must have 42% of locally made parts, and in the second year, the locally made parts rise to 60%, and in the third year, 80%.
What was the biggest issue in the negotiation between the Chinese government and General Motors？
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Have You Filled Up The Form？
Of all things in the world, I most dislike filling up forms. In fact, I have a【51】 horror of it. Applying for a living license,【52】 for an evening course, booking a holiday abroad—everything nowadays seem to involve【53】 information about one's personal life and habits that has little or nothing to do with the matter【54】 hand. When applying for a job, it may be【55】 some obscure interest to a【56】 employer to learn that I collect stamp or had measles as a child, but why should he conceivably want to know that my father was a tobacconist who died in 1988？
The authorities Who【57】 one to fill up forms, frequently demand answers to questions that one would hesitate to put【58】one's intimate friends. The worst of it is that, when【59】 with such questions, my mind goes blank, Have I ever suffered from a serious illness？ My mother always assured me I was "delicate". Do I suffer from any personal defects？ Well, I wear contact lenses and my upper teeth are not my own, but perhaps the word "defects"【60】 to my character. Am ! supposed to【61】that I like gambling, and find it difficult to get up in the morning？ Both of them are true.
Of all, I think job applications are the worst, education—previous experience—post held—give【62】…Terrified by the awful warning about giving false【63】which appear at the bottom of the form, I struggle to remember what exams I passed and how long I worked for what firms.【64】hard I try, there always seems to be a year or two for which I cannot satisfactorily account and which I am certain, if left【65】, that will give the impression that I was in prison or engaged in some occupation too dubious to mention.
(51)
Marriage Advertisements in India
Every Sunday morning millions of Indians settle down with a cup of tea and special weekend issues of their newspapers, just as Americans do. But here, with the marriage season approaching, many of them quickly to a Sunday feature that is particularly Indian — the columns of marriage advertisements in which young people look for husbands and wives. This is relatively(相关地)modern change in the age-old custom of the arranged marriage. The thousands of advertisements published each week increasingly reflect social changes that coming to this traditional society. For example, although women are still described in terms of appearance, or skill in "the wifely arts," information about her earning power is entering more and more of the advertisements. This reflects the arrival in India of the working wife.
Divorce, which used to be almost unheard of in India, is sometimes now mentioned in the advertisements as in the case of a woman whose advertisement in New Delhi newspaper explained that had been "the innocent party" when her marriage broke up.
Because the custom of the dowry(嫁妆)(marriage payment) is now illegal(违法的), some advertisements say "no dowry", or "simple marriage", which means the same thing. However, the fathers of many bridegrooms still require it.
In a land where light skin is often regarded as socially preferable, many also require that a woman have a "wheat-color" complexion(面色) or that a man be "tall, fair and handsome".
Advertisements are placed and eagerly read by a wide range of people in the upper classes, mostly in cities. Many of them receive dozens of answers. "There's nothing embarrassing about it, " explained a Calcutta businessman advertising a son-in-law. "It's just another way of broadening the contacts and increases the possibility of doing the contacts and increasing the possibilities of doing the best one for one's daughter."
Because of high unemployment and a generally poor standard of living here, one of the best attractions a marriage advertisement can offer is a permit to live abroad, especially in Canada or the United States. A person who has one can get what he wants.
One recent Sunday in Madras, for example, a Punjabi engineer living in San Francisco advertised for a "beautiful slim bride with lovely features knowing music and dance. " And a man whose advertisement said that he held an American immigration permit was able to say, only girls from rich, well-connected families need apply.
In marriage advertisements in India women are only introduced in terms of appearance or their skill in being a good wife.
Hurricane (飓风) Katrina
A hurricane is a fiercely powerful, rotating(旋转的)form. of tropical storm that can be 124 to 1,240 miles in diameter. The term hurricane is derived from Hurican, the name of a native American storm god. Hurricanes are typical of a calm central region of low pressure between "12 to 60 miles in diameter, known as the eye. They occur in tropical regions. Over its lifetime, one of these can release as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs.
The seed for hurricane formation is a cluster(聚集) of thunderstorm over warm tropical waters. Hurricanes can only form. and be fed when the sea-surface temperature exceeds 27℃ and the surrounding atmosphere is calm. These requirements are met between June and November in the northern part of the world.
Under these conditions, large quantities of water evaporate (蒸发) and condense (冷凝) into clouds and rain-releasing heat in the process. It is this heat energy, combined with the rotation of the Earth, that drives a hurricane.
When the warm column of air from the sea surface first begins to rise, it causes an area of low pressure. This in turn creates wind as air is drawn into the area. This spinning wind drags up more moist air from the sea surface in a process that strengthens the storm. Cold air falls back to the ocean surface through the eye and on the outside of the storm.
Initially, when wind speeds reach 23 miles per hour, these mild, wet and grey weather systems are known as depressions, or low air pressure. Hurricane Katrina formed in this way over the southeastern Bahamas on 23 August 2005, Katrina has had a devastating impact on the Gulf Coast of the US, leaving a disaster zone of 90,000 square miles in its wake(尾迹)-almost the size of the UK. Thousands have been killed or injured and more than half a million people have become homeless in a humanitarian(人道主义的) crisis of a scale not seen in the US since the Great Depression. The cost of the damage may top $100 billion.
The eye of a hurricane refers to its ______.
Winter is the toughest season for grasses and flowers to survive in desert.
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