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The author suggests that______.
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According to the passage, why did women become active in politics？
？Read the following extract from an article about Over-Capacity in the Car Business.
？For each question 15—20, mark one letter (A, B, C, or D) on your Answer Sheet for the answer you choose.
Since the days of Henry Ford's dominance of the car market in the 1920s up to the present day, the car industry has continued to grow. Some companies, such as British Leyland, failed to survive the turbulent business world of the 1970s despite being government-owned. During the 1960s and 1970s, as growth in profit became more difficult to achieve due to increased competition, mainly from the Japanese, the industry turned to efficient production methods in order to create a competitive advantage. However, once all the major players in the industry had become as efficient as possible, developing a cost advantage was more difficult to achieve. In addition, car companies from Asia, such as Daewoo, Samsung and Kia, have developed cheaper, more affordable alternatives for the discerning western buyers. Such car companies are part-funded by their respective governments but enjoy considerably lower labor costs.
Increasing productive capacity has led to car companies aiming to use economies of scale as the main way of reducing cost, although this has unfortunately led to businesses having surplus capacity. This spare capacity occurs when the industry as a whole expands ahead of, or in anticipation of, a growth in customer demand. Such growth in capacity has meant that supply outstrips demand by some 30%, i.e., car companies could cut back on their capacity levels by 30%, and still meet all customer demands.
The result has been a series of joint agreements and mergers between car companies, with a view to either using capacity, or losing capacity altogether by selling off parts of a business. The other problem is the high cost of developing new vehicles: the standard response to the high cost is to either rejuvenate or re-launch old vehicles with new technology. But there are enough companies developing new models that any business, which does not, stands to lose out. The main fear in the car industry is over-capacity—experts predict that by 2001, the industry may produce 23 million cars more than it can sell!
In 1998 there was a spate of company mergers—e.g. In January 1999, Ford paid ￡4 billion for Volvo's car division; Volvo claimed that it needed economies of scale, allowing it to focus on buses, engines and aerospace and to acquire shares in two major truck-making businesses. Ford intended to distribute Volvos with its own cars and hoped to use Volvo's reputation for technological excellence to develop new cars, using common research platforms to save money.
Renault, on the other hand, announced a joint agreement with Nissan, the debt-ridden Japanese company, to purchase a 37% stake. For Renault, the problem was not over-capacity, but rather the lack of product range. Renault was 44% owned by the French government, which obviously wanted to protect one of its major companies and wealth creators. However, Renault had concentrated its major marketing effort on domestic demand in France; as the domestic market fell, profit tumbled. The expiry in 1999 of the "gentlemen's agreement" which limited car sales from Japan was probably the main reason for teaming up with Nissan. Nissan, however, had borrowed approximately ￡15 billion in order to expand its productive capacity and had lost money in six of the last seven years. One estimate put 1998's losses at nearly ￡1 billion. The cost savings for both companies are not likely to occur until 2002, resulting mainly from purchasing economies of scale. Renault seems to have got caught between the large manufacturers who achieve economies of scale and the smaller specialist manufacturers.
During the 1960s and 1970s, in order to create a competitive advantage, the car industry turned to
A．inhabitedB．livedC．dwelledD．occupied
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：Keith: I hope you don't mind me interrupting you, Mr Bristow. Could you possibly spare me a few minutes？
Bristow: Can't it wait till this afternoon, Keith？
Keith: Well, it is rather urgent ...
Bristow: I see. It may be better to deal with it now, then. I may not have time after lunch. I'm going out with a customer and I might have to go on to his factory and not be back till late. Let's have it, then. What's the problem？
Keith: I've not been here very long, Mr Bristow, so I may be making a fool of myself. Accountants can make mistakes, I know, like anyone else, but ...
Bristow: All right, Keith. Get to the point.
Keith: It's this, Mr Bristow. I've been checking through the accounts over the past two years and I've reason to believe that someone may have been embezzling the firm's money. I can't prove the case yet in detail but I think there's enough evidence for you to look into it.
Bristow: That's a very serious charge. But go on.
Keith: What drew my attention to it was that Mr Hammond, the Works Manager, was complaining the other day that he could never get hold of enough spare parts. As you know, Mr Cross, the Purchasing Manager, has been off sick all this week, so Mr Hammond asked me to check on the stocks on what had been ordered.
Bristow: Quite right. Yes.
Keith: I found we've been ordering far more spare parts than we need for a long time. When I showed Mr Hammond the figure, he couldn't believe his eyes. He said we couldn't have been using such large quantities, and what's more, we'd been paying well over the market price for them. I checked over the last eighteen months and was able to discover what had been going on. The extra orders and higher prices were only for items we'd ordered from Holder
and Bragg. But of course they're our main suppliers. I thought I might have made a mistake, but Mr Hammond couldn't understand it. He said you might be able to throw light on it.
Bristow: Can I see the figures？ Hmm. Yes, there's no doubt the orders seem excessive. Let's take gear wheels as an example. We can't have been paying that much for them. Of course Cross may have over-ordered when he first came here two years ago, just to be on the safe side, but he can't have gone on doing that every month ...
Keith: And even then it doesn't explain the shortage, does it, Mr Bristow？ There are very few of these items in the store. Perhaps there is a logical explanation, but...
Bristow: There maybe, but I can't think of one. I can hardly believe it of Cross. But can there be any other explanation, apart from the obvious one？ And now that I think of it, someone said Cross was doing some part-time work as a consultant to a spare Parts firm. If it was Holder and Bragg ...
Keith: It may sound a bit presumptuous of me, Mr Bristow, but what I still can't understand is how my predecessor, Mr Lawton, didn't spot it. If he had been any good as an accountant, surely he would have realized that the figures were strange？
Bristow: That's the piece I needed to fit the puzzle together. Lawton is Cross's brother-in-law. In fact he recommended Cross to us. He must have been part of the swindle. Cross couldn't have got away with it, otherwise.
Keith: I know Mr Cross. has been in poor health recently.
Bristow: He may be ill, but that doesn't justify any of this. How long's he been off sick？
Keith: Since the beginning of the week. His secretary said he might be back tomorrow.
Bristow: Hm. Well, if you're right, as I think you are, he'll feel a lot sicker when we get to the bottom of this affair. Well done, anyway. Cross may be back tomorrow. That'll
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