Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)

Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet I. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

Rich Man, Poor Man

Gluers and sawyers from the furniture factories in Galax near the mountains of Virginia lost their jobs last year when American retailers decided they could find a better supplier in China. At the other end of the furniture industry Robert Nardelli lost his job this month when Home Depot decided it could find a better chief executive in his deputy. But any likeness ends there. Mr. Nardelli's exit was as extravagantly rewarded as his occupation of the corner office had been. Next to his $ 210 million severance pay, the redundant woodworkers packages were mean to the point of provocation (激怒).

That's the way it goes all over the rich world. If you look back 20 years, the total pay of the typical top American manager has increased from roughly 40 times the average--the level for four decades -- to 110 times the average now. These are the glory days of global capitalism. The mix of technology and economic integration transforming the world has created unparalleled prosperity. In the past five years the world has seen faster growth than at any time since the early 1970s. Having joined the global labor force, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries have won the chance to escape squalor (肮脏) and poverty. Hundreds of millions more stand to join them.

That promises to improve the lot of humanity as a whole incalculably. But in the rich world labor's share of GDP has fallen to historic lows, while profits are soaring. A clamor is abroad that Mr. Nardelli and his friends among the top hundredth -- or even the top thousandth -- of the population are seizing the lion's share of globalization's gains. Meanwhile everyone else -- not just blue-collar factory workers but also the wider office -- working middle class -- shuffles along, grimly waiting for the next round of cost-cuts.

Fear and clothing

Signs of a backlash abound. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has counted 27 pieces of anti-China legislation in Congress since early 2005. The German Marshall Fund found last year that, although most people still say they favor free trade, more than half of Americans want to protect domestic companies from foreign competition even if that slows economic growth. In a hint of labor's possible resurgence, the House of Representatives has just voted to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade. Even Japan is alarmed about inequality, stagnant (不景气的) wages and jobs going to China. Europe has tied itself in knots trying to "manage" trade in Chinese textiles.

Should you blame your computer?

The panic comes in part from a rush to lump all the blame on globalization. Technology -- an even less resistible force -- is also destroying white- and blue-collar tasks in a puff of automation and may play a bigger role in explaining rising wage inequality. The distinctions between technology and globalization count, if only because people tend to welcome computers but condemn foreigners (whether as competitors or immigrants). That makes technology easier to defend.

For economists, the debate about whether technology or globalization is responsible for capital's rewards outpacing those of labor is crucial, complicated and unresolved. One school, which blames globalization, argues that the rocketing profits and sluggish middling wages of the past few years are the long-lasting results of trade, as all those new develo

A．seemed to be redundant

B．irritated them

C．satisfied them

D．was close to Mr. Nardelli's