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1、1 .经济学人:网络暴力Online, where posts can lead their own viral lives and everything leaves a trail, words can be eviscerating. Often the only defence victims have is to delete their online profiles entirely. But that means forgoing a way to interact with others in a positive way. Bullying happens where yo
2、ung people spend their time-at present, mainly Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and WhatsApp. In South Korea the most likely venue is Kakaotalk, the country9s most popular messaging app. A widely suggested “solution“ is to forbid teenagers from particular platforms. But then they will migrate to anothe
3、r.Online, where posts can lead their own viral lives and everything leaves a trail, words can be eviscerating. Often the only defence victims have is to delete their online profiles entirely. But that means forgoing a way to interact with others in a positive way. Bullying happens where young people
4、 spend their timeat present, mainly Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and WhatsApp. In South Korea the most likely venue is Kakaotalk, the countrys most popular messaging app. A widely suggested “solution” is to forbid teenagers from particular platforms. But then they will migrate to another.2 .经济学人:中国
5、电子支付有多强?Digital paymentsThe dash from cashIn the worlds most censored region of cyberspace, finding an unpatrolled spot to air shared grievances is hard.Yet disgruntled Chinese software developers have recently found one at their fingertips: GitHub, a platform owned by Microsoft that allows develope
6、rs to help each other build software.Fed up with the grindingly long work hours imposed on them by Chinas internet giants, this collective has recently built something elsea movement demanding more humane office hours and calling out the worst corporate offenders.Their beef is the 996 regime, which
7、refers to a work schedule of 9am to 9pm, six days a week, often without extra pay.Toiling such hours has become an unspoken rule in the frenetic world of Chinese tech.IL经济学人:调休有多痛苦,假期就有多快乐A vacation gives workers a chance to recharge their mental batteries. For Bartleby, this means reading books tha
8、t do not have titles like “Beyond Performance 20” (sadly, a genuine example of a management tome). Heading to a new location allows employees to clear their thoughts. After all, there is more to life than spreadsheets and sales forecasts. To misquote Timothy Leary, the 1960s hippie guru, a holiday i
9、s time to turn off and drop out”.It also means workers get more sleep by escaping the tyranny of the early-morning alarm. In addition, they no longer suffer the agonies of the daily commute: the cramped railway carriages or gridlocked roads. And best of all, there are no meetings to endureno need to
10、 sit with a vaguely interested expression on your face while time seems to slow to a crawl. In short, holidays reduce stress. And in the long run, stress makes workers less likely to perform well.Smart devices are sometimes empowering.They put a world of information at our fingertips.They free peopl
11、e to work from home instead of squeezing onto a train with malodorous strangers. That is a huge boon for parents seeking flexible work hours. ()Smartphones and tablets can also promote efficiency by allowing people to get things done in spare moments that would otherwise be wasted, such as while que
12、uing for coffee.They can even help slackers create the illusion that they are working around the clock, by programming their e-mail to be sent at lam.But for most people the servant has become the master.Not long ago only doctors were on call all the time.Now everybody is. Bosses think nothing of in
13、vading their employees* free time.Work invades the home far more than domestic chores invade the office. Otherwise-sane people check their smartphones obsessively, even during pre-dinner drinks, and send e-mails first thing in the morning and last thing at night.What a controversial pastry says abou
14、t Chinas economyMooncakes are a useful indicator of trends, from consumption to corruption.MOONCAKES are among the most divisive treats. For some the chewy pastries are delicacies on which to gorge for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese holiday that falls this year on September 24th. For others they
15、 are dry, dense and full of calories. But for economists they are something else entirely: an indicator of important trends in consumption, innovation, corruption and grey-market trading.Mooncakes play this role because of their status as gifts. Ahead of the mid-autumn holiday, companies give them t
16、o employees; business contacts exchange them. Consumption of mooncakes is thus less a reflection of whether people enjoy the pastries, likened by some to edible hockey pucks, and more a measure of the health of the economy. So it is heartening to know that, amid rising trade tensions with America, t
17、he Chinese bakery association has forecast that sales of mooncakes will rise by a solid 5-10% this year.Some observers fret that Chinese consumers, burdened by rising debt, have started opting for cheaper goods. But consumers still plump for more expensive varieties of mooncakes rather than the clas
18、sic nut-and-egg-yolk fillings. Shangri-La, a five-star hotel chain, has won fans with its blueberry-cheese mooncake (dismissed by traditionalists as cheesecake). Judging by long queues at Haagen-Dazs stores, mooncake-shaped ice-cream sandwiches are also booming. At least 30 listed food companies, mo
19、re than ever before, are vying for a bite of the $2bn mooncake market this year.14.经济学人:网游为何让人成瘾Human psychology tells us that players should enjoy a game that satisfies the need for control, bestows a sense of ones progress, and fosters relationships with friends and others encountered. Yet gamers
20、differ in their individual needs. Each person has their own player personality and this variation has spawned a vast industry designed to meet different motivations. Some may want to release aggression (Call of Duty), escape reality (World of Warcraft) or oversee building projects (Minecraft). Other
21、s are more motivated by in-game rewards, or have a high loss aversion and so find a challenging game unfair or frustrating (while others find it thrilling). A game like Flappy Birds, will most appeal to those who are attracted by repetitive actions, difficulty and have a low loss aversion. Those who
22、 have a high loss aversion, however, will find it infuriating.Players are motivated by the extent to which different games fulfill their basic psychological needs; but some factors, more than others, are found in addiction. One risk factor is found in players who are trying to escape” through fantas
23、y immersion or role play. Indeed, their game use may be a symptom of some other underlying problem, say social phobia or depression. Playing can then generate a vicious cycle that is hard to treat if the game is a way of self-medicating. For example, a child who is unpopular in school, or being bull
24、ied, may be important and powerful in a video game. Real life may struggle to compete.6经济学人:小镇做题家的一生Rural children in China face obstacles at every stage of development. Babies are more likely to be undernourished and lack parental attention. By the time they enter primary school, many have ailments
25、 such as anaemia, poor vision and worms. Around 60% of students from the poorest counties suffer from at least one of these afflictions, says Mr Rozelle.Those who, despite the odds, make it to elite universities often feel socially isolated. In 2020 a student from the countryside took to social medi
26、a to describe being “lost and confused at university after leaving the straightforward environment of school, where passing tests was the focus. More than 100,000 students, many with rural backgrounds, weighed in, sharing their own experiences of feeling like misfits and lamenting their job prospect
27、s. They coined a new term in Chinese: xiao zhen zuotijia, meaning small-town swot”.Wang Jianyue, a country-born physics whizz, can relate to their complaints. He chose to study finance at university, thinking it would be easier to find a job with such a specialism. It was only after he saw several o
28、f his classmates get internships at big financial firms using their parents connections that he truly understood the gap” between himself and them. Mr Wang changed his focus to computer science. Unlike some other small-town swots, he has, to his relief, got a job offer.Rings on the ropesThe 2020 Oly
29、mpics will be memorable, but not in the way Japan hopedEven if disaster is averted, a sense of national renewal will remain elusiveClouds gathered over Komazawa stadium in Tokyo as the Olympic torch arrived on July 9th. Because of the pandemic, the traditional public relay was replaced by a small ce
30、remony behind the stadiums closed doors. Protesters outside held signs that read Protect lives not the Olympics and Extinguish the Olympic torch”. As Kyogoku Noriko, a civil servant, put it, Now is not the time fbr a festival/5 More enthusiastic onlookers lined a nearby footbridge, hoping to catch a
31、 glimpse of the flame through the stadiums rafters. For Honma Taka, an office worker, the torch offered “a bit of light within the darkness”.Mr Honma longingly recalled a brighter day in the same park eight years earlier, when he joined thousands of others to celebrate as Tokyo won the right to host
32、 the games. Abe Shinzo, Japans prime minister at the time, said he was happier than he had been when he became prime minister. Mr Abe saw the Olympics as a chance to lend credence to his bullish catchphrase: Japan is back”. He hoped the games would help the country snap out of its gloom after decade
33、s of economic stagnation, demographic decline and devastating natural disasters. The games, says Taniguchi Tomohiko, a special adviser to Mr Abe, were seen as a source of a commodity that was in scarce supply: hope fbr the future.For a generation, Chinas government had persuaded its married couples
34、that “one child is enough”. Then, in 2016, it allowed parents to give birth to a second. Now they may at last have a third. On May 31st, at a meeting of the ruling Politburo, the countrys most senior officials decreed that a further relaxation of birth-control regulations would help China to fulfil
35、its goal of actively coping with an ageing population.Fresh in their minds are the results of the latest once-a-decade census, which were released on May 11th. They made plain a deepening demographic predicament: only 12m babies were born last year in China, a drop of almost 20% from 2019 and the co
36、untrys lowest population growth since the 1960s, when it was reeling from a widespread famine.No indication was given of when the three-child policy would take effect. But reactions to the announcement on social media hardly brimmed with enthusiasm. “Do they not yet know that most young people are e
37、xhausted just supporting themselves?1* commented one netizen on Weibo, a Twitter-like site. This policy is totally out of touch with the people J wrote another. An online poll by Xinhua, a state news agency which broke the news, asked if people would consider having three children. Just 5% of respon
38、dents said they would. Most others said “not at all”. At least 31,000 took part in the survey before it was hastily taken down. Netizens devised a new interpretation of a common idiom, minbuliaosheng, which means the people have no means of livelihood. They repurposed it to mean “not even speak of g
39、iving birth”.18.探索太空50年The next 50 years in spaceA new age of space exploration is beginning. It will need the rule of law and a system of arms control to thriveThe moment when, 50 years ago, Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the surface of the Moon inspired awe, pride and wonder around the world.
40、This newspaper argued that man, from this day on, can go wheresoever in the universe his mind wills and his ingenuity contrives.to the planets, sooner rather than later, man is now certain to go. But no. The Moon landing was an aberration, a goal achieved not as an end in itself but as a means of si
41、gnalling Americas extraordinary capabilities. That point, once made, required no remaking. Only 571 people have been into orbit; and since 1972 no one has ventured much farther into space than Des Moines is from Chicago.补充:人类为什么要探索太空?(写作素材)19.经济学人:人口普查,究竟有多难?In the coming weeks nearly every Chinese
42、house will receive a knock on the door. On November 1st 7m functionaries will begin carrying out the country9s ten-yearly census, a task that will take them until December 10th. The last such count, in 2010, found that Chinas total population was growing only half as swiftly as it did between 1991-2
43、000. This years megacount will provide further details about the countrys demographic crunch.Censuses are difficult everywhere, but Chinas is especially fraught. Its hundreds of millions of migrant workers are tricky to count, not least because some fear reprisals for having moved to parts of the co
44、untry that the Communist Party would like them to leave. Some people do not want officials to find out that they have had more children than family-planning policies allow. Fraudsters and thieves who have posed as census-takers during past counts have given enumerators a bad name. And local governme
45、nts have sometimes sought to inflate population figures in order to claim more subsidies from Beijing.This time, says the government, new paperless systems will help to protect peoples information and make it harder for anyone to fiddle the count. There are also plans to substitute door-to-door visi
46、ts with phone calls and online forms, if census officials in some places have to work around local outbreaks of covid-19. Whereas many Chinese shy from the box-tickers, some are hoping to use this years exercise to help make themselves more visible. A gay-rights group in the southern city ofGuangzho
47、u is encouraging people in same-sex relationships to make sureRich countries are racing to dematerialise payments. They need to do more to prepare for the side-effectsFor the past 3,000 years, when people thought of money they thought of cash. From buying food to settling bar tabs, day-to-day dealin
48、gs involved creased paper or clinking bits of metal. Over the past decade, however, digital payments have taken off-tapping your plastic on a terminal or swiping a smartphone has become normal. Now this revolution is about to turn cash into an endangered species in some rich economies. That will mak
49、e the economy more efficient-but it also poses new problems that could hold the transition hostage.Countries are eliminating cash at varying speeds. But the direction of travel is clear, and in some cases the journey is nearly complete. In Sweden the number of retail cash transactions per person has fallen by 80% in the past ten years. Cash accounts for just 6% of purchases by value in Norway. Britain is probably four or six years behin
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