托福閱讀真題Official 48 Passage 1（七）

托福閱讀真題Official 48 Passage 1（七）

Chinese Population Growth

Increases in population have usually been accompanied(indeed facilitated)by an increase in trade.In the Western experience,commerce provided the conditions that allowed industrialization to get started,which in turn led to growth in science,technology,industry,transport,communications,social change,and the like that we group under the broad term of“development.”However,the massive increase in population that in Europe was at first attributed to industrialization starting in the eighteenth century occurred also and at the same period in China,even though there was no comparable industrialization.

It is estimated that the Chinese population by 1600 was close to 150 million.The transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties(the seventeenth century)may have seen a decline,but from 1741 to 1851 the annual figures rose steadily and spectacularly,perhaps beginning with 143 million and ending with 432 million.If we accept these totals,we are confronted with a situation in which the Chinese population doubled in the 50 years from 1790 to 1840.If,with greater caution,we assume lower totals in the early eighteenth century and only 400 million in 1850,we still face a startling fact:something like a doubling of the vast Chinese population in the century before Western contact,foreign trade,and industrialization could have had much effect.

To explain this sudden increase we cannot point to factors constant in Chinese society but must find conditions or a combination of factors that were newly effective in this period.Among these is the almost complete internal peace maintained under Manchu rule during the eighteenth century.There was also an increase in foreign trade through Guangzhou(southern China)and some improvement of transportation within the empire.Control of disease,like the checking of smallpox by variolation may have been important.But of most critical importance was the food supply.

Confronted with a multitude of unreliable figures,economists have compared the population records with the aggregate data for cultivated land area and grain production in the six centuries since 1368.Assuming that China’s population in 1400 was about 80 million,the economist Dwight Perkins concludes that its growth to 700 million or more in the 1960s was made possible by a steady increase in the grain supply,which evidently grew five or six times between 1400 and 1800 and rose another 50 percent between 1800 and 1965.This increase of food supply was due perhaps half to the increase of cultivated area,particularly by migration and settlement in the central and western provinces,and half to greater productivity—the farmers’success in raising more crops per unit of land.

This technological advance took many forms:one was the continual introduction from the south of earlier-ripening varieties of rice,which made possible double-cropping(the production of two harvests per year from one field).New crops such as corn(maize)and sweet potatoes as well as peanuts and tobacco were introduced from the Americas.Corn,for instance,can be grown on the dry soil and marginal hill land of North China,where it is used for food,fuel,and fodder and provides something like one-seventh of the food energy available in the area.The sweet potato,growing in sandy soil and providing more food energy per unit of land than other crops,became the main food of the poor in much of the South China rice area.

Productivity in agriculture was also improved by capital investments,first of all in irrigation.From 1400 to 1900 the total of irrigated land seems to have increased almost three times.There was also a gain in farm tools,draft animals,and fertilizer,to say nothing of the population growth itself,which increased half again as fast as cultivated land area and so increased the ratio of human hands available per unit of land.Thus the rising population was fed by a more intensive agriculture,applying more labor and fertilizer to the land.

Question 13 of 14

Look at the four squares[■]that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage.Other developments addressed the problems of dry and sandy areas unsuitable for growing China’s native crops.Where would the sentence best fit?Click on a square[■]to add the sentence to the passage.

正確答案：A

題目詳解

題型分類：插入句子題

題干分析：考察句子和句子之間的銜接判斷。插入句說“其他方面的發(fā)展則解決了不宜種植中國本土作物的旱地沙地問題”。這句話中other的出現(xiàn)表明前面有過一種發(fā)展，對于下文的展開則應該是詳細講解這種發(fā)展是什么。

選項分析：

A選項前方信息One was恰好符合Other developments的邏輯暗示，黑體句中的China’s native crops與A選項后面的New crops以及introduced from the Americas相對應。

B選項Corn，for instance是例證前一句的New crops的，不能插入。

C選項后面信息描述sweet potato種在貧瘠的地方和前一句信息并列，不適合插入。

D選項前面兩句都是在講農(nóng)作物種植在貧瘠的土地上，沒有給出other developments對應的第一種development，而且下文沒有展開，不選。

Question 14 of 14

Directions:An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below.Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage.Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage.This question is worth 2 points.

Over the centuries,China has experienced an extraordinary increase in its population.

Answer Choices:

A.

Understanding the exceptional increase in population in China requires giving up commonly held assumptions relative to the phenomenon of population growth.

B.

Improved transportation management and enhanced disease control contributed to China’s population explosion.

C.

The economist Dwight Perkins applied a particular statistical method to determine the increase in China’s population.

D.

The increase in China’s food supply,which affected population growth,was the result of technological developments in agriculture and capital investment.

E.

The sudden population growth in China started in its northern and southern provinces,and it spread rapidly to the central and western areas of the country.

F.

A steady increase in foreign trade since the 1400s provided the conditions necessary for large-scale agricultural development.

正確答案：ABD

題目詳解

題型分類：文章總結題

題干分析：選擇概括性的正確選項

選項分析：

A選項：為第一段主旨。

B選項：對應第三段提到的transportation、disease。

D選項：提到的technology和capital為第五、六段主要內(nèi)容。

C選項：第三段提及到的DP經(jīng)濟學家他只是一個調(diào)查者沒有determined中國人。

E選項：原文提及central and western areas of the country，但不是跟the sudden population growth in China有關。

F選項：根據(jù)原文第二段最后一句，中國人口增長出現(xiàn)在大規(guī)模foreign trade之前。

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