英文輸入測驗模擬試題 編號：E104
With the popular election of President Lee Teng-hui in 1996, Taiwan completed its transition to an open, democratic system. Lee, who is also the Chairman of the Nationalist Party (KMT), appoints the Premier, who heads the Executive Yuan (EY), or cabinet. Constitutional amendments adopted in 1997 provided the Legislative Yuan (LY) with
the
authority to bring down the Cabinet with a no confidence vote and removed the previous power of the LY to confirm the appointment of the Premier. The current LY members were elected in a free and fair election in December. The ruling KMT remains the single most powerful political force with a working majority in the LY, where two opposition parties play significant roles.
The Arctic region is taking the first blows, according to the recent study by the International Arctic Science Committee. In
Fairbanks,
the number of 40-below days is now half what it was in the 1950s. The permafrost is warming, by an estimated two to four degrees
centigrade.
And sea ice is shrinking: In the Bering Sea, it has been reduced by about 5 percent over the past 40 years.
China has a mixed economy that continues to expand, albeit at a slower rate than in recent years. The growth rate target was 8.0
percent for 1998. According to official government statistics gross domestic product reached a growth rate of 7.8 percent, but the actual figure was widely considered to be between 3 and 5 percent. The
economy faces growing problems, including state enterprise reform, unemployment, underemployment, and regional economic disparities.
Rural
unemployment and underemployment is estimated to be over 30 percent.
In March 1996, Beijing lobbed missiles at Taiwan. Since then, the People's Liberation Army has deployed more than 100 of its newest
M-9
and M-11 missiles across the Taiwan Straits, and the number may reach
650 by 2005, according to Pentagon. In August 1998, North Korea launched
missiles over Japan. These incidents and security threats from elsewhere
prompted the US to more than double its ballistic-missile-defense budget
in February 1999 to a record $10 million dollars between now and 2005.
A part of the Program is the Theater Missile Defense, designed to neutralize ballistic missile attacks in North East Asia. Will the
Republic of China participate in the development and employment of TMD?
Our views follow.
I went to Yale and majored in Chinese literature. By the time
I finished college, I was fluent in Mandarin and nearly so in Cantonese, has struggled through a fair amount of classical Chinese and had
translated the works of a modern poet. Oddly, though, I had no desire to go to China, it sounded like a gaint penal colony to me, and besides, I have never liked traveling much. I did need a job, though, so I
applied to and was accepted by the Yale-China Association to teach English at Hunan Medical College in Changsha.
