托福阅读真题Official 48 Passage 1（七）

2023-07-10 14:09:31 来源：中国教育在线

托福阅读真题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.

正确答案：A

题目详解

题型分类：插入句子题

题干分析：考察句子和句子之间的衔接判断。插入句说“其他方面的发展则解决了不宜种植中国本土作物的旱地沙地问题”。这句话中other的出现表明前面有过一种发展，对于下文的展开则应该是详细讲解这种发展是什么。

选项分析：

A选项前方信息One was恰好符合Other developments的逻辑暗示，黑体句中的China’s native crops与A选项后面的New crops以及introduced from the Americas相对应。

B选项Corn，for instance是例证前一句的New crops的，不能插入。

C选项后面信息描述sweet potato种在贫瘠的地方和前一句信息并列，不适合插入。

D选项前面两句都是在讲农作物种植在贫瘠的土地上，没有给出other developments对应的第一种development，而且下文没有展开，不选。

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:

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

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

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

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

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.

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

正确答案：ABD

题目详解

题型分类：文章总结题

题干分析：选择概括性的正确选项

选项分析：

A选项：为第一段主旨。

B选项：对应第三段提到的transportation、disease。

D选项：提到的technology和capital为第五、六段主要内容。

C选项：第三段提及到的DP经济学家他只是一个调查者没有determined中国人。

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

F选项：根据原文第二段最后一句，中国人口增长出现在大规模foreign trade之前。