考研英语阅读练习：《经济学人》选读

考研英语：《经济学人》选读《经济学人》一直是考研阅读的命题来源之一，平日里我们可以利用碎片时间稍加阅读一些文章，领会政经类文章的写作手法，适当拓展自己的词汇量，也是不错的练习。

Britain Dug prohibition英国禁毒Banning the east African stimulant may backfire东非的兴奋剂禁令可能会适得其反OUTSIDE a newsagent's shop in the Clapham Road， a south London thoroughfare， a man sucks on a rolled-up cigarette and asks passers-by whether they want to buy some cannabis。

在伦敦大街南部的克拉彭路的一个报刊亭旁，一个人正叼着卷烟问路人他们是否需要大麻。

But shoppers seem more interested in khat， a mild narcotic popular with Ethiopians， Somalis and Yemenis。

但消费者似乎对阿拉伯茶—在俄塞俄比亚人、索马里人和也门人群中颇受欢迎的一种轻度镇定剂。

Inside， the shopkeeper pulls out bundles of the yellowish leaf and explains that it is the last batch he will sell。

店里内部，店主拿出少许淡黄色叶片并说明这些是他将卖出的最后一批货了。

“After tomorrow， they stop， no more，” he says。

“明日之后，再没有这些东西了，”他说。

On June 24th the sale of khat was prohibited in Britain，almost a year after Theresa May， the home secretary， told the House of Commons that she intended to ban it。

考研英语：8月6日《经济学人》选读Italy's illegal immigrants意大利非法移民Tidal wave海啸More horrific deaths in the Mediterranean地中海发生耸人听闻的惨案FEW images of immigrant traffic across the Mediterranean have been as harrowing. Italian TV viewers this week saw the lifeless bodies of 45 African men being lifted, like animal carcasses, from the hold of a fishing boat in which they had tried to reach Europe. Others on the vessel said the men begged to be let out but, for fear of it capsizing, they were forcibly kept below and suffocated.每次发生在地中海的移民惨案都令人异常痛心。

这周，意大利电视台播报了一组新闻。

54个非洲人乘坐一艘渔船想前往欧洲，却不想在船上命丧黄泉。

船上的人说这些人祈求将他们放出来，但是为了防止船只颠覆，他们被关在舱底窒息而死。

Around 5,000 people were picked up by patrol boats on June 28th-29th, the busiest weekend of the year so far. On July 2nd another 70 migrants were reported lost at sea in a separate incident. All this comes after Italy began a search-and-rescue effort called Operation Mare Nostrum, in response to the tragedy last October in which 360 people drowned off Lampedusa, an island half-way between Sicily and the North African coast. On July 1st the police arrested five Eritreans who prosecutors said were part of a ring, with bases in Sudan, Libya and Italy, that arranged the latest ill-fated journey. In a wiretapped phone call, one was heard disowning responsibility for their deaths because “it was their fate”.6月28、29日两天，巡逻船逮捕了大约5000人，这是今年截至目前最忙碌的一周。

Is growth in China soaring or slowing?中国的经济增长究竟是在飙升还是在放缓The answer depends on how you calculate growth答案可能取决于你如何计算The excited headlines were predictable. When China reported its GDP for the first three months of the year on April 16th, growth soared to 18.3% compared with a year earlier. It was China’s fastest growth on record, underlining the strength of its recovery. Yet it also illustrates the oddities in how GDP is reported.这些激动人心的头条新闻都在意料之中。

4月16日，中国公布了今年前三个月的GDP数据，相比去年同期增长了18.3%。

这成为了中国有史以来最大的一次增幅，凸显了中国经济复苏的强势势头。

不过，这也说明了GDP报告方式的奇怪之处。

China’s recovery should be old news. Since last March, when the country emerged from its covid-19 closures, a wide range of indicators, from metro ridership to export orders, have pointed upwards.中国的经济复苏已经不是什么新闻了。

自去年3月中国成功控制住疫情以来，从地铁客运量到出口订单等一系列指标都呈上升趋势。

But because the convention in China is to report GDP in year-on-year terms, it is only now that the recovery makes a dramatic appearance in its most-watched data series. 但由于中国过去习惯于以年为单位公布GDP数据，因此直到现在，经济复苏才在其最受欢迎的一系列数据中脱颖而出。

The Guardian view on unaffordable homes: building injustice into the economy《卫报》关于难以负担的住房的观点：在经济中制造不公The average wage of the top 1% in Britain rose to £13,770 a month in December. Jeevun Sandher, an economist at King’s College London, points out the very richest saw their incomes rise the fastest during the pandemic. This group were also likely to have been able to save the most while Covid raged. Where do the very wealthiest spend their cash? One place is housing, for which there is a low level of stock being released on to the market. The result is rising house prices. Over the past 12 months, asking prices have gone up by 9.5%.12月，英国最富有的1%人群的平均工资上升至每月13770英镑。

伦敦国王学院的经济学家桑德尔指出，在疫情期间，最富有的人的收入增长最快。

在新冠病毒肆虐期间，这一群体也可能是能够存最多钱的人。

最富有的人把钱花在哪里？其中一个地方就是住房，因为住房市场上的存量很低。

结果就是房价上涨。

在过去12个月里，住房要价上涨了9.5%。

This has a knock-on effect for renters. UK rents rose by 8.3% in the last three months of 2021. For would-be first-time buyers, the situation is as bad if not worse, with the current average price of £277,000 nearly £25,000 higher than just a year ago. Those looking to have a roof to live under will find little solace in official figures. These record an 11% drop in the number of total homes added in 2021 compared with the year before. The number of new affordable houses that began being built dropped 16% year-on-year. Shortages of labour and materials, as well as planning delays, will make it harder for the 11th Tory housing minister since 2010 to meet government targets for new homes.这对租客产生了连锁反应。

A global house-price slump is coming全球房价即将暴跌It won’t blow up the financial system, but it will be scary虽然不会摧毁金融体系，但仍然令人恐慌Over the past decade owning a house has meant easy money. Prices rose reliably for years and then went bizarrely ballistic in the pandemic. Yet today if your wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar it is time to get nervous.过去十年里，拥有一套房就意味着轻松赚钱。

房价多年来一直稳步上涨，甚至在疫情期间还异乎寻常地飙升了。

然而现如今，如果你的财富被套牢在房产上，那你应该感到紧张了。

House prices are now falling in nine rich economies. The drops in America are small so far, but in the wildest markets they are already dramatic. In condo-crazed Canada homes cost 9% less than they did in February.九个发达经济体的房价都在下跌。

到目前为止，美国房价的跌幅还不大，但最疯狂的市场的房价跌幅已经非常大了。

在热衷于共管公寓的加拿大，房价较今年2月下跌了9%。

As inflation and recession stalk the world a deepening correction is likely—even estate agents are gloomy. Although this will not detonate global banks as in 2007-09, it will intensify the downturn, leave a cohort of people with wrecked finances and start a political storm.随着通货膨胀和经济衰退的风险在全球范围内蔓延，房价或将迎来一场深度调整——甚至房地产经纪人也对此感到悲观。

Malaysia’s elephants stay more outside protected areas than in马来西亚大象呆在保护区外的时间比呆在保护区内的时间更久The grub is better there因为那里有更好的食物Way back in 1999, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, adoyen of research into African elephants, made an intriguing discovery. Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track them—a first—he found that they knew exactly where the boundaries of protected areas were.早在1999年，研究非洲象的老前辈伊恩·道格拉斯-汉密尔顿就有了一个有趣的发现。

他最早利用全球定位系统（GPS）追踪非洲象，发现它们非常清楚保护区的边界在哪里。

They ranged freely within these areas, but when crossing between them, through apparently similar but unprotected habitat, they did so at night and at what was (for an elephant) a gallop.它们会在保护区内自由活动，而一旦想穿过看似没什么区别但未受保护的栖息地时，它们会选择在夜间且疾驰而过（对于大象而言）。

At first sight, it looks as though Asian elephants did not get the memo. They seem to travel outside protected areaswith gay abandon. But a study by Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, in Yunnan province, China, and Benoit Goossens of Danau Girang Field Centre, in Sabah, Malaysia, suggests that this abandon is not quite as gay as it seems.乍一看，亚洲象似乎不懂这些。

One afternoon in April 2020, I took an old bamboo rod out of my shed and cut it to a length of 115cm. Stood on the ground, it came about halfway up my chest. I laid it on a scrubby patch of our garden on the island of Aegina, in Greece: one end next to a tough-looking dandelion, the other pointed northwards. Then I dug up the dandelion with a trowel and replanted it at the other end of the stick. A small step for humans, but quite the leap for the dandelion.2020年4月的一个下午，我从棚子里拿出一根旧竹竿，把它切成了115厘米的长度。

立在地上，它的长度大概是到我胸部高度的一半。

我把它搁在花园中的一小片灌木丛生的土地上，花园位于希腊的埃吉纳岛（Aegina）上。

竹竿的一端挨着一株看上去很强韧的蒲公英，另一端朝着北方。

随后我用泥铲把蒲公英挖了出来，再把它重新种进竹竿另一端的土里。

对人类来说，这是一小步的距离，但对蒲公英而言却是一次不小的跃进。

This 115cm corresponds to a particular measurement. It is the present average velocity of climate change — how fast the effects of global heating are moving across the surface of the planet — and thus represents the speed we need to move in order for the conditions around us to stay the same. It also implies a direction: the bubble habitats where different forms of life can survive and thrive are moving uphill, and towards the poles.这115厘米所对应的是一个特定的尺寸。

Have baby, stay in school生孩子还是继续上学？Why teenage mothers in Zimbabwe struggle to get educated为什么津巴布韦的未成年妈妈很难继续接受教育Brilliant Ndlovu has never really known childhood. Since the age of seven she has headed her household in Tsholotsho, a town in rural western Zimbabwe, after her parents went to work abroad. The oldest of five, she scraped a living growing crops while trying to keep up with her schoolwork.聪明的恩德洛夫从未真正经历过童年。

自从7岁起，她的父母去国外工作后，她就一直在津巴布韦西部乡村小镇茨洛特肖主持家务。

她是五个孩子中的老大，一边靠种庄稼勉强糊口，一边还要努力完成学业。

But in 2020 the covid-19 pandemic struck, coming shortly after a devastating drought. Farmers could not afford to pay child labourers like Ms Ndlovu. “So I looked for a man to help support my family,” she recalls. She found one who demanded sex in exchange for money. Aged 17, she got pregnant.但在2020年，经历一场毁灭性的干旱后，新冠疫情又紧随其后。

Britain’s young face a poorer future英国年轻一代面临更加贫穷的未来Economic statistics will never fully capture the extent of the sacrifices of Britain’s youth during the pandemic. For a generation of students and pupils it was a lost chance to make friends, explore who they are and, gradually, become adults — as well as to learn, in person. In the face of the deaths in the broader population, it is easy to dismiss as frivolous the setbacks of those who missed partying, travelling and dating during the long months stuck inside but these are still years of carefree youth they will not get back. What is more, most of these privations were primarily to protect those from older generations, the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.经济统计数字将永远不能完全反映出英国青年在这场大流行病中牺牲了多少。

对于这一代学生来说，他们失去了结交朋友、探索自我并逐渐成长为人,以及亲身学习的机会。

在有人死于新冠疫情之际，我们很容易认为被困在室内长达数月而错过聚会、旅行和约会的人所经历的这些挫折无关痛痒，但这是他们再也无法重返的无忧无虑的青春时光。

Surging living costs force Britons to work past retirement age生活成本飙升迫使英国人退休后继续工作The share of older UK workers planning to carry on working in their retirement has nearly doubled in two years due to rising living costs and insufficient pension savings, according to a survey from Abrdn.根据Abrdn的一项调查, 由于生活成本上升和养老金储蓄不足, 计划退休后继续工作的英国老年员工比例在两年内增加了近一倍。

The investment manager’s stark findings underscore the impact of soaring energy and food prices on household budgets, which is pressuring people’s finances as inflation hits a 30-year high.这家投资管理公司的严峻调查结果凸显出能源和食品价格飙升对家庭预算的影响。

随着通胀触及30年高点, 家庭预算正给人们的财务状况带来压力。

Surveying people planning to retire in 2022, Abrdn found that 66 per cent respondents proposed to continue with some form of employment beyond retiring, up from just over 50 per cent in a similar study last year and just 34 per cent in 2020.Abrdn对计划2022年退休的人进行了调查, 发现66%的受访者打算在退休后继续从事某种形式的工作, 而在去年的一项类似研究中, 这一比例略高于50%, 而在2020年, 这一比例仅为34%。

考研英语碎片阅读：《经济学人》选篇Saudi Arabia's women drivers沙特女司机Ovarian issue卵巢问题？Will Saudi women ever be allowed behind the wheel of a car?沙特的女性能获得开车权吗？WHEN a group of Saudi women first took to the kingdom's roads to flout its ban on female drivers, they publicised their protest by fax and videocassette. The 47 participants suffered fines, travel bans, social ostracism and, in some cases, the loss of government jobs. The ban itself, 23 years and many protests later, remains. But much else has changed.当第一次一群沙特女同志占据王国之路来嘲笑禁止女性司机这一法令时，她们通过传真和录音机来将她们的抗议公之于众。

那47位参与者遭到罚款、旅行禁令、社会排斥异己在某些情况下，失去了政府部门工作。

这条法令，在历经23年并遭到无数次反抗之后，如今仍然保留着。

但是很多东西早已改变。

The campaigners behind a drive-along protest scheduled for October 26th have put it on Twitter, Facebook and a slick website. Their petition demanding that the government issue driving licences to women has gathered close to 17,000 signatures. A call for women to upload videos of themselves driving has already gathered dozens of clips. The footage of headscarved ladies navigating suburban traffic may scarcely be thrilling, but some have scored over 100,000 web viewings.策划10月26日单独驾驶抗议的活动者们已经将这一禁令发布到推特，脸谱以及一个热门网站上。

China’s “dreamchild” is stealthily winning the battery race中国“梦之子”悄然引领电池竞赛In America, if you want to dominate an industry, you channel your inner Elon Musk and shout about it. But CATL, the Chinese company that makes batteries for some of Mr Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles (EVs), is different. When your columnist first contacted it in 2017, the brush-off was swift.在美国，如果你想主宰一个行业，你就得调动自己内心的埃隆·马斯克并大声咆哮。

但为马斯克的部分特斯拉电动汽车供应电池的中国公司宁德时代则不同。

当笔者在2017年第一次与该公司取得联系时，对方直接拒绝了我们的采访。

“We want to concentrate on our products only and do not accept any interviews at present.” These days it is only marginally less blunt. “Unfortunately, we are sorry that it’s hard for us to arrange [interviews] at the moment.” The temptation is to give it a dose of its own medicine and ignore it.“我们只想专注于我们的产品，目前不接受任何采访。

”如今，该公司的态度没有过去那么生硬了，但也只是稍微缓和。

A new study finds preschool can be detrimental to children一项新的研究发现，学前教育对孩子可能并没有好处But the picture may not be as gloomy as it seems但前景或许并不那么悲观Free, universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds is a key component of the Democrats’ agenda. Proponents say pre-kindergarten, or pre-K, education can be transformative for children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. A new study seems to contradict this.为三、四岁儿童提供免费、普及的学前教育是民主党议程的一个关键组成部分。

支持者表示，学前教育对儿童（尤其是对那些来自弱势家庭的儿童来说）能够起到变革性作用。

一项新的研究似乎得出了与之相矛盾的结论。

It finds that children who attended a pre-K programme in Tennessee actually scored worse on a range of education and behavioural measures. Yet this might reflect general improvements in early education rather than the impact of one programme.该研究发现，在田纳西州参加学前教育项目的儿童实际上在一系列教育和行为指标上得分更低。

不过，这可能反映了早期教育的普遍改善，而不是一个项目的影响。

考研英语《经济学人》选读在考研英语的备考过程中，阅读部分的重要性不言而喻。

而《经济学人》作为一份具有广泛影响力和高质量内容的英文刊物，成为众多考研学子提升阅读能力和积累语言素材的重要资源。

《经济学人》涵盖了政治、经济、科技、文化等多个领域的内容，其文章不仅语言地道、表达精准，还具有深刻的见解和独特的视角。

通过阅读《经济学人》，考生可以接触到丰富多样的话题，从而拓宽自己的知识面和思维广度。

首先，从语言层面来看，《经济学人》中的词汇丰富且用法灵活。

很多考研英语词汇在《经济学人》的文章中都能找到生动的运用实例。

比如，“proliferation”（激增；扩散）这个相对较难的词汇，在一篇关于新兴技术快速发展的文章中可能就会出现“the proliferation of artificial intelligence”这样的表述。

再比如，“mitigate”（减轻；缓和）这个词，可能会在讨论环境问题的文章里被用到，如“measures to mitigate climate change”。

除了词汇，《经济学人》中的句子结构也十分多样，既有简单明了的短句，也有复杂冗长的长句。

长句的分析和理解对于提升考研英语阅读中的长难句分析能力至关重要。

例如：“Despite the challenges posed by the economic downturn and the uncertainties brought about by geopolitical tensions, the company managed to maintain a steady growth rate by implemen ting innovative strategies and leveraging its core competencies”这样的长句包含了多种从句和短语，通过对其结构的剖析和理解，能够帮助考生更好地应对考研英语阅读中的类似句子。

考研英语：《经济学人》选读Spain's economy西班牙经济Iberian dawn伊比利亚的黎明The labour market is recovering at last. But it needs further reform.劳动市场最终还是复苏了，但是其需要进一步的改革。

THIS was the news the government had been waitingfor. “Spain's labour market has made a 180-degree turn,” crowed the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, as the country announced the first annual rise in employment in six years. The numbers show that unpopular reforms to the malfunctioning labour market are starting to work. But there is plenty left to do.这是政府翘首以待的消息。

“西班牙的劳动力市场已经发生了180度的大转弯”，当西班牙政府宣布这是六年来西班牙首次就业增长时，西班牙总理马里亚诺·拉霍伊对此洋洋自得。

这些数字表明那些不受失灵劳动力市场待见的改革也已经初见成效，但仍有许多东西亟待解决。

In the past year Spain has created 190,000 jobs. The unemployment rate, still one of the highest in the euro zone, fell from 26% to 24.5% (see chart), and the labour force stopped shrinking after six straight quarters of decline.在过去的一年中西班牙国内增加了19万个就业岗位。

What are the keys to a successful life?成功的关键是什么?No matter what your goals are in life, there is one great law that you need to obey in order to be successful: No one else is going to climb the ladder of success for you. No one else is responsible for your health, wealth, happiness, or success. From the day you leave your parents’ house and start to make your own choices, you are responsible for your life and the choices you make.无论你的人生目标是什么，要想成功，你必须遵守一条伟大的法则：没有人会替你登上成功的阶梯。

没有人会对你的健康、财富、幸福或成功负责。

从你离开父母家开始做出自己的选择的那一天起，你就要对自己的生活和选择负责。

You choose the job you work in, the person you live with, and how much you exercise every day. Only you can choose how you spend your time, and the decisions you make on a consistent basis will make or break your life.你可以选择你的工作、与你一起生活的另一伴以及每天的运动量。

只有你自己可以选择如何分配你的时间，而你所做的决定将会成就或毁掉你的生活。

Anxiety does not cause bad results in exams焦虑不会导致考试成绩不好The problem is in the run-up, not the main event问题出在准备阶段，而不是考试阶段Exams are nerve-racking, especially for those already of an anxious disposition. The silence of the hall; the ticking of the clock; the beady eye of the invigilator; the smug expression of the person sitting at the neighbouring desk who has finished 15 minutes early. It therefore seems hardly surprising that those who worry about taking tests do systematically worse than those who do not.考试是一件伤脑筋的事，尤其是对那些本来就容易焦虑的人来说。

走廊里一片寂静；时钟滴答作响；监考老师目光锐利；邻桌的考试提前15分钟完成作答，露出得意的表情。

因此，那些担心考试的人会比那些不担心考试的人表现更差，这似乎并不奇怪。

What is, perhaps, surprising, according to research published recently in Psychological Scienceby Maria Theobald at the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education and her colleagues, is that it is not the pressure of the exam hall which causes the problem. It is the pressure of revision.莱布尼茨教育研究与信息研究所的玛丽亚·西奥博尔德和她的同事们最近在《心理科学》杂志上发表了一项研究，令人惊讶的是，引发这一问题的并不是考场的压力，而是复习的压力。