1010G【fish】COMMENTS

annie-dollUID: 2706282

never too old to learn 那篇语言虽然简单，但是很值得学习。native写的东西就是老道。很多用法只可意会不可言传

Executive education and the over-55s
Never too old to learnOlder executives are shunning corporate training. This is a problem both for them and the firms they work forMay 12th 2010 | From The Economist online
“LIFELONG learning” is a phrase beloved by business schools. But not, it seems, by their clients. According to a recent survey by Mannaz, a management-development firm, the number of professionals taking part in formal corporate training drops rapidly after the age of 55. Are these wise, old heads being overlooked?

It is tempting to conclude that older executives are falling victim to age discrimination, as firms focus resources on younger talent. But according to Jorgen Thorsell, Mannaz’s vice-president, this is not the case. Reticence, he says, comes not from the organisations but from the employees themselves.

Mr Thorsell believes that conventional training simply no longer serves their needs. Formal programmes are often seen as a repetition of lessons already learned and become increasingly irrelevant in the light of experience and expertise. The resulting “training fatigue” is resistant to most incentives.

This doesn’t mean that more seasoned （=experienced, veteran）executives have completely abandoned the idea of personal and career development, however. Instead Mr Thorsell says that this group prefers a do-it-yourself approach, conducting their own research and swapping (人家不用exchange) war stories with their peers rather than take a place at business school.

Manager, teach thyself

This autodidactic approach carries two potential dangers （学习人家的搭配，carry potential danger）. The first is that a wealth of knowledge and experience is lost from the classroom, which reduces the value of the training for everyone else. But non-participation may also be the beginning of a process of detachment from the organisation, its aims and aspirations, which in time will damage both parties. Furthermore, Stephen Burnett, associate dean of executive education at the Kellogg School of Management close to Chicago, says that as executives start to stretch their careers into their seventies, education makes even more sense for this group.

One solution is to throw money at the problem. When senior managers are offered the chance to mix with their peers at a top business school, rather than a bog-standard (普通的，无新意的) institution, they seem to be quickly won over. IMD in Switzerland, for example, maintains that it does not see any drop in the number of older managers on its programmes, and goes on to say that it has actually witnessed organisations investing heavily in them throughout the downturn.

Few organisations could afford to put all of their veteran managers through the sort of prestigious programmes that IMD offers. But firms do need to engage those managers below the C-suite (C型雇员，只企业最高管理层)—what one management consultant describes as the “magnificent middle”—because these are the front-liners who make things happen within any business and who carry around (随身携带) in their heads the secrets of how the organisation works.

One way in which this can be done is to make training less about abstract theory and more about the actual workplace. This means steering clear of the case studies that business schools are so fond of and instead relating new ideas directly to what is happening on a day-to-day basis within the organisation. To accomplish this, training should be delivered in short, sharp bursts so that executives can take a lesson, put it into practice, assess its effectiveness and then return to shape it further in light of this “trial by fire”.

Henry Mintzberg from McGill University in Canada, a high-profile champion of the middle manager, takes this approach one step further. He believes the best way to win over this group is to get them to train themselves. His “Coaching Ourselves” organisation brings experienced executives together for 90 minutes at a time. Managers are supplied with learning guides but not teachers. The emphasis is also unashamedly Luddite. Laptops, BlackBerrys and the like are discouraged in favor of old-fashioned pen and paper. “They discuss and reflect on how the topic impacts on them,” says Mr Minztberg. “[The managers] learn from each other and, most crucially, develop actions for their workplaces.”

Whatever approach an organisation takes to embrace its veterans, an ageing population means that it must do something, or else face the much more serious problem of how to replace them and their valuable knowledge in the near future. Unfortunately teaching an old dog the value of lifelong learning is notoriously tricky.

azure9UID: 2789030

有个问题，day-to-day basis是怎么意思呢？

lty900301UID: 2715509

有个问题，day-to-day basis是怎么意思呢？
azure9 发表于 2010-5-13 18:38

-on a day-to-day basis： 每日，日常每日，日常

azure9UID: 2789030

-on a day-to-day basis： 每日，日常每日，日常
lty900301 发表于 2010-5-13 21:58

3Q~
o(∩_∩)o...

azure9UID: 2789030

【COMMENT】2-1

The China model
The Beijing consensus is to keep quiet
In the West people worry that developing countries want to copy “the China model”. Such talk makes people in China uncomfortable
May 6th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

CHINESE officials said the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai on April 30th would be simple and frugal. It wasn’t. The display of fireworks, laser beams, fountains and dancers rivalled the extravagance of Beijing’s Olympic ceremonies in 2008. The government’s urge to show off Chinese dynamism proved irresistible. For many, the razzmatazz lit up the China model for all the world to admire.

The multi-billion-dollar expo embodies this supposed model, which has won China many admirers in developing countries and beyond. A survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, found that 85% of Nigerians viewed China favourably last year (compared with 79% in 2008), as did 50% of Americans (up from 39% in 2008) and 26% of Japanese (up from 14%,). China’s ability to organise the largest ever World Expo, including a massive upgrade to Shanghai’s infrastructure, with an apparent minimum of the bickering that plagues democracies, is part of what dazzles.

Scholars and officials in China itself, however, are divided over whether there is a China model (or “Beijing consensus” as it was dubbed in 2004 by Joshua Cooper Ramo, an American consultant, playing on the idea of a declining “Washington consensus”), and if so what the model is and whether it is wise to talk about it. The Communist Party is diffident about laying claim to any development model that other countries might copy. Official websites widely noted a report by a pro-Party newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, calling the expo “a display platform for the China model”. But Chinese leaders avoid using the term and in public describe the expo in less China-centred language.

Not so China’s publishing industry, which in recent months has been cashing in on an upsurge of debate in China about the notion of a China model (one-party rule, an eclectic approach to free markets and a big role for state enterprise being among its commonly identified ingredients). In November a prominent Party-run publisher produced a 630-page tome titled “China Model: A New Development Model from the Sixty Years of the People’s Republic”. In January came the more modest “China Model: Experiences and Difficulties”. Another China-model book was launched in April and debated at an expo-related forum in Shanghai. Its enthusiastic authors include Zhao Qizheng, a former top Party propaganda official, and John Naisbitt, an American futurologist.

Western publishers have been no less enthused by China’s continued rapid growth. The most recent entry in the field is “The Beijing Consensus, How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century” by Stefan Halper, an American academic. Mr Halper, who has served as an official in various Republican administrations, argues that “just as globalisation is shrinking the world, China is shrinking the West” by quietly limiting the projection of its values.

But despite China’s status as “the world’s largest billboard advertisement for the new alternative” of going capitalist and staying autocratic, Party leaders are, as Mr Halper describes it, gripped by a fear of losing control and of China descending into chaos. It is this fear, he says, that is a driving force behind China’s worrying external behaviour. Party rule, the argument runs, depends on economic growth, which in turn depends on resources supplied by unsavoury countries. Politicians in Africa in fact rarely talk about following a “Beijing consensus”. But they love the flow of aid from China that comes without Western lectures about governance and human rights.

The same fear makes Chinese leaders reluctant to wax lyrical about a China model. They are acutely aware of American sensitivity to any talk suggesting the emergence of a rival power and ideology—and conflict with America could wreck China’s economic growth.

In 2003 Chinese officials began talking of the country’s “peaceful rise”, only to drop the term a few months later amid worries that even the word “rise” would upset the flighty Americans. Zhao Qizheng, the former propaganda official, writes that he prefers “China case” to “China model”. Li Junru, a senior Party theorist, said in December that talk of a China model was “very dangerous” because complacency might set in that would sap enthusiasm for further reforms.

Some Chinese lament that this is already happening. Political reform, which the late architect of China’s developmental model, Deng Xiaoping, once argued was essential for economic liberalisation, has barely progressed since he crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Liu Yawei of the Carter Centre, an American human-rights group wrote last month that efforts by Chinese scholars to promote the idea of a China model have become “so intense and effective” that political reform has been “swept aside”.

Chinese leaders’ fear of chaos suggests they themselves are not convinced that they have found the right path. Talk of a model is made all the harder by the stability-threatening problems that breakneck growth engenders, from environmental destruction to rampant corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor. One of China’s more outspoken media organisations, Caixin, this week published an article by Joseph Nye, an American academic. In it Mr Nye writes of the risks posed by China’s uncertain political trajectory. “Generations change, power often creates hubris and appetites sometimes grow with eating,” he says.

One Western diplomat, using the term made famous by Mr Nye, describes the expo as a “competition between soft powers”. But if China’s soft power is in the ascendant and America’s declining—as many Chinese commentators write—the event, which is due to end on October 31st, hardly shows it. True, China succeeded in persuading a record number of countries to take part. But visitor turnout has been far lower than organisers had anticipated. And queues outside America’s dour pavilion have been among the longest.

azure9UID: 2789030

【COMMENT】2-2
Business software
Office politics
Microsoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google's challenge
May 13th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO | From The Economist online

ANYONE attending the launch on May 12th of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office software suite could have been forgiven for thinking they had walked into a meeting about meteorology rather than technology. All the talk was of clouds—vast data centres that provide cheap and plentiful computing capacity accessible via the internet—and how companies can take advantage of them to boost productivity. In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software.

These initiatives come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing. After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage the cloud to erode its share of the market

Chief among the pretenders to the throne is Google, which is aggressively seeking to persuade companies to ditch Office and other Microsoft products in favour of its own web-based offerings, called Google Apps. The competition between these two behemoths is likely to become even more intense as companies loosen their IT purse strings as the economic outlook improves. Google offers some of its web applications free, but these versions lack some of the more sophisticated functions that large companies often need, so it sells them a high-end version of Google Apps for $50 per user per year.

The battle with Google Apps is one that Microsoft cannot afford to lose

For Microsoft, this is a battle that it cannot afford to lose. Office is a big money-spinner for the company and many corporate users are locked into longer-term contracts that guarantee a steady stream of revenue from the software. Small wonder, then, that Stephen Elop, the head of Microsoft’s business division, has described the launch of Office 2010 as “an epic release”.

Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say, embed videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering.

Microsoft says GM and Starbucks have chosen its web offerings after rejecting Google's

Mr Elop points out that Microsoft already has 40m paying customers using online services from the company, whereas Google can only boast a fraction of that number. He also claims that firms such as General Motors and Starbucks have decided to embrace Microsoft’s web offerings after weighing them up against Google’s. “The fact that Microsoft has to point to people who considered Google and decided not to go with us is evidence of how far we have come in the business arena,” sniffs one senior Google executive.

There is little doubt that Google, which claims it has over 2m users of its productivity apps, looms large in the rearview mirror of Microsoft’s business division. This week the company even cheekily proposed to firms using Office 2007, the previous release of Microsoft’s business software, that they bolt on Google Apps to get much of the web-based functionality they need, instead of upgrading to Office 2010. Google has also been tweaking its own cloud services to make them run faster and to give users even more of a desktop-like experience.

Yet while Google has been able to sign up some large clients such as Genentech and Motorola, it still gets the lion’s share of its business from small and medium-sized companies. The internet giant argues that this will eventually change as more companies rebel against multiple-year contracts and embrace the flexibility that web-based apps offer. Perhaps, but there are also a host of other companies, including IBM and relatively unknown outfits like Zoho that also have their sights set on this market too. And Microsoft is clearly gearing up for a fight. Get ready for a truly epic battle in the cloud.

azure9UID: 2789030

The China model
The Beijing consensus is to keep quiet
In the West people worry that developing countries want to copy “the China model”. Such talk makes people in China uncomfortable
May 6th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

CHINESE officials said the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai on April 30th would be simple and frugal. It wasn’t. The display of fireworks, laser beams, fountains and dancers rivalled the extravagance of Beijing’s Olympic ceremonies in 2008. The government’s urge to show off Chinese dynamism proved irresistible. For many, the razzmatazz lit up the China model for all the world to admire.

frugal: avoiding waste
rivalled: of Rival
razzmatazz: any exciting and complex play intended to confuse (dazzle) the opponent

The multi-billion-dollar expo embodies this supposed model(实体化了这个虚构的模型), which has won China many admirers in developing countries and beyond. A survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, found that 85% of Nigerians viewed China favourably last year (compared with 79% in 2008), as did 50% of Americans (up from 39% in 2008) and 26% of Japanese (up from 14%,). China’s ability to organise the largest ever World Expo, including a massive upgrade to Shanghai’s infrastructure, with an apparent minimum of the bickering that plagues democracies, is part of what dazzles. (这句有点不理解，我自己的理解是：中国举办有史以来最大的一次世博会是使人眼花缭乱的原因的一部分，其中还包括带着不太明显的，来自民主政体对于巨大的上海基础设施的升级的打扰.   求解呀！)

favourably: showing approval
upgrade: to improve
              give a promotion to
infrastructure: the basic structure or features of a system or organization
                      the stock of basic facilities and capital equipment needed for the functioning of a country or area

Scholars and officials in China itself, however, are divided over whether there is a China model (or “Beijing consensus” as it was dubbed in 2004 by Joshua Cooper Ramo, an American consultant, playing on the idea of(演艺了关于XX的点子) a declining “Washington consensus”), and if so what the model is and whether it is wise to talk about it. The Communist Party is diffident about laying claim to any development model that other countries might copy. Official websites widely noted a report by a pro-Party newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, calling the expo “a display platform for the China model”. But Chinese leaders avoid using the term and in public describe the expo in less China-centred language(这里是什么意思，求解).

dub: give a nickname to

Not so China’s publishing industry, which in recent months has been cashing in on an upsurge of debate in China about the notion of a China model (one-party rule, an eclectic approach to free markets and a big role for state enterprise being among its commonly identified ingredients). In November a prominent Party-run publisher produced a 630-page tome titled “China Model: A New Development Model from the Sixty Years of the People’s Republic”. In January came the more modest “China Model: Experiences and Difficulties”. Another China-model book was launched in April and debated at an expo-related forum in Shanghai. Its enthusiastic authors include Zhao Qizheng, a former top Party propaganda official, and John Naisbitt, an American futurologist.

cashing in on: (disapproving) to gain an advantage for yourself from a situation, especially in a way that other people think is wrong or immoral
upsurge:  a sudden forceful flow
               a sudden or abrupt strong increase
eclectic: selecting what seems best of various styles or ideas
ingredient: an abstract part of something
                a component of a mixture or compound
prominent: having a quality that thrusts itself into attention
                conspicuous in position or importance
launch: take off or begin
           get going; give impetus to; "launch a career";

Western publishers have been no less enthused by(对于XX的热情一点也没有少) China’s continued rapid growth. The most recent entry in the field is “The Beijing Consensus, How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century” by Stefan Halper, an American academic. Mr Halper, who has served as an official in various Republican administrations, argues that “just as globalisation is shrinking the world, China is shrinking the West” by quietly limiting the projection of its values(求解).

But despite China’s status as “the world’s largest billboard advertisement for the new alternative” of going capitalist and staying autocratic, Party leaders are, as Mr Halper describes it, gripped by a fear of losing control and of China descending into chaos. It is this fear, he says, that is a driving force behind China’s worrying external behaviour(外在表現). Party rule, the argument runs, depends on economic growth, which in turn depends on resources supplied by unsavoury countries.(很好的推理句子呀~) Politicians in Africa in fact rarely talk about following a “Beijing consensus”. But they love the flow of aid from China that comes without Western lectures about governance and human rights.(地道的表達，lectures about governace and human rights.)

unsavoury: morally offensive
                 
The same fear makes Chinese leaders reluctant to wax lyrical(求解) about a China model. They are acutely aware of American sensitivity to any talk suggesting the emergence of a rival power and ideology—and conflict with America could wreck China’s economic growth.

In 2003 Chinese officials began talking of the country’s “peaceful rise”, only to drop the term a few months later amid worries that even the word “rise” would upset the flighty Americans. Zhao Qizheng, the former propaganda official, writes that he prefers “China case” to “China model”. Li Junru, a senior Party theorist, said in December that talk of a China model was “very dangerous” because complacency might set in that would sap enthusiasm for further reforms.

complacency: the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself
sap: deplete

Some Chinese lament(用词很准确呀~) that this is already happening. Political reform, which the late architect of China’s developmental model, Deng Xiaoping, once argued was essential for economic liberalisation(?), has barely progressed since he crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.(crushed...protests) Liu Yawei of the Carter Centre, an American human-rights group wrote last month that efforts by Chinese scholars to promote the idea of a China model have become “so intense and effective” that political reform has been “swept aside”.

lament: express grief verbally
            regret strongly

Chinese leaders’ fear of chaos suggests they themselves are not convinced that they have found the right path.(好句子) Talk of a model is made all the harder(求解) by the stability-threatening problems that breakneck growth engenders, from environmental destruction to rampant corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor. One of China’s more outspoken media organisations, Caixin, this week published an article by Joseph Nye, an American academic. In it Mr Nye writes of the risks posed by China’s uncertain political trajectory. “Generations change, power often creates hubris and appetites sometimes grow with eating(大好的句子呀！),” he says.

breakneck:very fast or dangerous
engender: call forth
rampant: unrestrained and violent              
trajectory:The path followed by an object moving through space

One Western diplomat, using the term made famous by Mr Nye, describes the expo as a “competition between soft powers”. But if China’s soft power is in the ascendant and America’s declining—as many Chinese commentators write—the event, which is due to end on October 31st, hardly shows it. True, China succeeded in persuading a record number of countries to take part. But visitor turnout has been far lower than organisers had anticipated. And queues outside America’s dour pavilion have been among the longest.

ascendant: position or state of being dominant or in control

talentliuyangUID: 2752741

【COMMENT】2-2 Business software Office politics Microsoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google's challenge May 13th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO | From The Economist online ANYONE attending the launch on May 12th of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office software suite could have been forgiven for thinking they had walked into a meeting about meteorology rather than technology. All the talk was of clouds—vast data centres that provide cheap and plentiful computing capacity accessible via the internet—and how companies can take advantage of them to boost productivity. In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software. 第一段中的 launch，announce，release，unveil，都是新闻中常用的表示“发布新产品、新闻、消息”的词语 These initiatives come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing. After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage the cloud to erode its share of the market   come at a critical time in the evolution of  本句型可用于科技类、历史类、政治类等带有时代变迁色彩的issue   faces a growing challenge from           Chief among the pretenders to the throne is Google, which is aggressively seeking to persuade companies to ditch Office and other Microsoft products in favour of its own web-based offerings, called Google Apps. The competition between these two behemoths is likely to become even more intense as companies loosen their IT purse strings as the economic outlook improves. Google offers some of its web applications free, but these versions lack some of the more sophisticated functions that large companies often need, so it sells them a high-end version of Google Apps for $50 per user per year. behemoth：巨头，巨兽，形容这两家科技巨头公司 loosen their IT purse strings     loosen...purse strings 节省开支 The battle with Google Apps is one that Microsoft cannot afford to lose For Microsoft, this is a battle that it cannot afford to lose. Office is a big money-spinner for the company and many corporate users are locked into longer-term contracts that guarantee a steady stream of revenue from the software. Small wonder, then, that Stephen Elop, the head of Microsoft’s business division, has described the launch of Office 2010 as “an epic release”. money-spinner ： 摇钱树，赚大钱的事业 Small wonder： 不足为奇 Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say, embed videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering. Microsoft says GM and Starbucks have chosen its web offerings after rejecting Google's Mr Elop points out that Microsoft already has 40m paying customers using online services from the company, whereas Google can only boast a fraction of that number. He also claims that firms such as General Motors and Starbucks have decided to embrace Microsoft’s web offerings after weighing them up against Google’s. “The fact that Microsoft has to point to people who considered Google and decided not to go with us is evidence of how far we have come in the business arena,” sniffs one senior Google executive. There is little doubt that Google, which claims it has over 2m users of its productivity apps, looms large in the rearview mirror of Microsoft’s business division. This week the company even cheekily proposed to firms using Office 2007, the previous release of Microsoft’s business software, that they bolt on Google Apps to get much of the web-based functionality they need, instead of upgrading to Office 2010. Google has also been tweaking its own cloud services to make them run faster and to give users even more of a desktop-like experience. Yet while Google has been able to sign up some large clients such as Genentech and Motorola, it still gets the lion’s share of its business from small and medium-sized companies. The internet giant argues that this will eventually change as more companies rebel against multiple-year contracts and embrace the flexibility that web-based apps offer. Perhaps, but there are also a host of other companies, including IBM and relatively unknown outfits like Zoho that also have their sights set on this market too. And Microsoft is clearly gearing up for a fight. Get ready for a truly epic battle in the cloud.

建议大家在电脑上安装 有道词典完整版（好像是30多M），然后开启屏幕取词功能，此外该软件还有OCR取词功能，即在图片文件上悬停鼠标也可以取词
非广告，这样在学习comments的时候就不需要把中文都标记出来，影响阅读体验，鼠标放上去意思就出来了，很方便。

talentliuyangUID: 2752741

【COMMENT】2-1 学习

The China model
The Beijing consensus is to keep quiet
In the West people worry that developing countries want to copy “the China model”. Such talk makes people in China uncomfortable
May 6th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

CHINESE officials said the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai on April 30th would be simple and frugal. It wasn’t. The display of fireworks, laser beams, fountains and dancers rivalled the extravagance of Beijing’s Olympic ceremonies in 2008. The government’s urge to show off Chinese dynamism proved irresistible. For many, the razzmatazz lit up the China model for all the world to admire.
   rival 在这里用的很好
   the razzmatazz lit up ... for all the world to ...

The multi-billion-dollar expo embodies this supposed model, which has won China many admirers in developing countries and beyond. A survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, found that 85% of Nigerians viewed China favourably last year (compared with 79% in 2008), as did 50% of Americans (up from 39% in 2008) and 26% of Japanese (up from 14%,). China’s ability to organise the largest ever World Expo, including a massive upgrade to Shanghai’s infrastructure, with an apparent minimum of the bickering that plagues democracies, is part of what dazzles.

Scholars and officials in China itself, however, are divided over whether there is a China model (or “Beijing consensus” as it was dubbed in 2004 by Joshua Cooper Ramo, an American consultant, playing on the idea of a declining “Washington consensus”), and if so what the model is and whether it is wise to talk about it. The Communist Party is diffident about laying claim to any development model that other countries might copy. Official websites widely noted a report by a pro-Party newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, calling the expo “a display platform for the China model”. But Chinese leaders avoid using the term and in public describe the expo in less China-centred language.

Not so China’s publishing industry, which in recent months has been cashing in on an upsurge of debate in China about the notion of a China model (one-party rule, an eclectic approach to free markets and a big role for state enterprise being among its commonly identified ingredients). In November a prominent Party-run publisher produced a 630-page tome titled “China Model: A New Development Model from the Sixty Years of the People’s Republic”. In January came the more modest “China Model: Experiences and Difficulties”. Another China-model book was launched in April and debated at an expo-related forum in Shanghai. Its enthusiastic authors include Zhao Qizheng, a former top Party propaganda official, and John Naisbitt, an American futurologist.

Western publishers have been no less enthused by China’s continued rapid growth. The most recent entry in the field is “The Beijing Consensus, How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century” by Stefan Halper, an American academic. Mr Halper, who has served as an official in various Republican administrations, argues that “just as globalisation is shrinking the world, China is shrinking the West” by quietly limiting the projection of its values.
no less ： 仍然
But despite China’s status as “the world’s largest billboard advertisement for the new alternative” of going capitalist and staying autocratic, Party leaders are, as Mr Halper describes it, gripped by a fear of losing control and of China descending into chaos. It is this fear, he says, that is a driving force behind China’s worrying external behaviour. Party rule, the argument runs, depends on economic growth, which in turn depends on resources supplied by unsavoury countries. Politicians in Africa in fact rarely talk about following a “Beijing consensus”. But they love the flow of aid from China that comes without Western lectures about governance and human rights.

The same fear makes Chinese leaders reluctant to wax lyrical about a China model. They are acutely aware of American sensitivity to any talk suggesting the emergence of a rival power and ideology—and conflict with America could wreck China’s economic growth.

In 2003 Chinese officials began talking of the country’s “peaceful rise”, only to drop the term a few months later amid worries that even the word “rise” would upset the flighty Americans. Zhao Qizheng, the former propaganda official, writes that he prefers “China case” to “China model”. Li Junru, a senior Party theorist, said in December that talk of a China model was “very dangerous” because complacency might set in that would sap enthusiasm for further reforms.

Some Chinese lament that this is already happening. Political reform, which the late architect of China’s developmental model, Deng Xiaoping, once argued was essential for economic liberalisation, has barely progressed since he crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Liu Yawei of the Carter Centre, an American human-rights group wrote last month that efforts by Chinese scholars to promote the idea of a China model have become “so intense and effective” that political reform has been “swept aside”.

Chinese leaders’ fear of chaos suggests they themselves are not convinced that they have found the right path. Talk of a model is made all the harder by the stability-threatening problems that breakneck growth engenders, from environmental destruction to rampant corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor. One of China’s more outspoken media organisations, Caixin, this week published an article by Joseph Nye, an American academic. In it Mr Nye writes of the risks posed by China’s uncertain political trajectory. “Generations change, power often creates hubris and appetites sometimes grow with eating,” he says.
这一段 可以背诵下来，不管是讲中国问题， 还是社会问题，亦或是历史上的某个时段的问题，都可以借用一下

One Western diplomat, using the term made famous by Mr Nye, describes the expo as a “competition between soft powers”. But if China’s soft power is in the ascendant and America’s declining—as many Chinese commentators write—the event, which is due to end on October 31st, hardly shows it. True, China succeeded in persuading a record number of countries to take part. But visitor turnout has been far lower than organisers had anticipated. And queues outside America’s dour pavilion have been among the longest.

这文章写的很好，值得再次一读

azure9UID: 2789030

Business software
Office politicsMicrosoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google's challengeMay 13th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO | From The Economist online

ANYONE attending the launch on May 12th of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office software suite could have been forgiven for thinking they had walked into a meeting about meteorology rather than technology. All the talk was of clouds—vast data centres that provide cheap and plentiful computing capacity accessible via the internet—and how companies can take advantage of them to boost productivity. In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled(出去...的面纱) changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software.

collaborate: work together on a common enterprise of project

These initiatives come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing.(这是很好的句型) After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage the cloud to erode its share of the market
啊，我要把这段背下来，句子都很好用！

Chief among the pretenders to the throne is Google, which is aggressively seeking to persuade companies to ditch Office and other Microsoft products in favour of its own web-based offerings, called Google Apps. The competition between these two behemoths(巨獸) is likely to become even more intense as companies loosen their IT purse strings as the economic outlook improves. Google offers some of its web applications free, but these versions lack some of the more sophisticated functions that large companies often need, so it sells them a high-end(求解) version of Google Apps for $50 per user per year.

The battle with Google Apps is one that Microsoft cannot afford to lose

For Microsoft, this is a battle that it cannot afford to lose. Office is a big money-spinner(好形象) for the company and many corporate users are locked into longer-term contracts that guarantee a steady stream of revenue from the software. Small wonder, then, that Stephen Elop, the head of Microsoft’s business division, has described the launch of Office 2010 as “an epic release”.

Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets(电子制表软件) on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say, embed videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering.

tweak: adjust finely

embed: to fix or set securely or deeply

Microsoft says GM and Starbucks have chosen its web offerings after rejecting Google's

Mr Elop points out that Microsoft already has 40m paying customers using online services from the company, whereas Google can only boast a fraction(挖苦打擊諷刺) of that number. He also claims that firms such as General Motors and Starbucks have decided to embrace Microsoft’s web offerings after weighing them up against Google’s. “The fact that Microsoft has to point to people who considered Google and decided not to go with us is evidence of how far we have come in the business arena(競技場),” sniffs one senior Google executive.

There is little doubt that Google, which claims it has over 2m users of its productivity apps, looms large in the rearview mirror(后視鏡) of Microsoft’s business division. This week the company even cheekily(厚臉皮的) proposed to firms using Office 2007, the previous release of Microsoft’s business software, that they bolt on(应该是绑定在一起的意思) Google Apps to get much of the web-based functionality they need, instead of upgrading to Office 2010. Google has also been tweaking its own cloud services to make them run faster and to give users even more of a desktop-like experience.

Yet while Google has been able to sign up some large clients such as Genentech and Motorola, it still gets the lion’s share of its business from small and medium-sized companies. The internet giant argues that this will eventually change as more companies rebel against multiple-year contracts and embrace the flexibility that web-based apps offer. Perhaps, but there are also a host of other companies, including IBM and relatively unknown outfits like Zoho that also have their sights set on this market too. And Microsoft is clearly gearing up for a fight. Get ready for a truly epic battle in the cloud.

rebel: participating in organized resistance to a constituted government

这文章用词很生动，读起来很有趣。

agnes2010UID: 2794922

第一次做comment~做了很久，感觉自己有很多生词，不过很有收获~


【COMMENT】2-1
Studied by Agnes
2010-5-14

The China model
The Beijing consensus is to keep quiet
In the West people worry that developing countries want to copy “the China model”. Such talk makes people in China uncomfortable
May 6th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition

CHINESE officials said the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai on April 30th would be simple and frugal. It wasn’t. The display of fireworks, laser beams, fountains and dancers rivalled the extravagance of Beijing’s Olympic ceremonies in 2008. The government’s urge to show off Chinese dynamism proved irresistible. （这证明当地政府情不自禁地渴望展示中国人的热情活力。）For many, the razzmatazz lit up the China model for all the world to admire.

frugal ：adj. 1.（对金钱、食物等）节约的，节俭的，节省的 2.量少而且便宜的，简单廉价的

(synonym) economical, scotch, sparing, stinting

(similar) thrifty

rival ： vt.与…竞争, 与…匹敌，比得上be equal to in quality or ability

(synonym) equal, touch, match

irresistible ： adj. impossible to resist; overpowering; irresistible (or resistless) impulses

razzmatazz  ：n. any exciting and complex play intended to confuse (dazzle) the opponent

(synonym) razzle-dazzle, razzle, razmataz

The multi-billion-dollar expo embodies this supposed model体现了这个假设的模式, which has won China many admirers in developing countries and beyond. A survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, found that 85% of Nigerians尼日利亚人 viewed China favourably last year (compared with 79% in 2008), as did 50% of Americans (up from 39% in 2008) and 26% of Japanese (up from 14%,). China’s ability to organise the largest ever World Expo, including a massive upgrade to Shanghai’s infrastructure上海基础建设的大规模提升, with an apparent minimum of the bickering
（a quarrel about petty points） that plagues democracies, is part of what dazzles. 中国主办的有史以来最大规模的世博会、上海基础建设的大规模提升，这些仅仅只是中国在世界范围内闪耀的一部分，虽然其中明显有极少数争论观点认为民主性会随之逐步破坏。？

plague
cause to suffer a blight; annoy continually or chronically;

Scholars and officials in China itself, however, are divided over在……上有分歧
whether there is a China model (or “Beijing consensus” as it was dubbed in 2004 by Joshua Cooper Ramo, an American consultant, playing on the idea of a declining “Washington consensus”), and if so what the model is and whether it is wise to talk about it. The Communist Party is diffident about laying claim to any development model that other countries might copy. Official websites widely noted a report by a pro-Party newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, calling the expo “a display platform for the China model”. But Chinese leaders avoid using the term and in public describe the expo in less China-centred language.
但中国领导避免使用这一术语并在公共场合尽可能减少使用以中国为中心的语言描述本届世博？

Not so China’s publishing industry, which in recent months has been cashing in on an upsurge of debate in China about the notion of a China model (one-party rule, an eclectic approach to free markets and a big role for state enterprise being among its commonly identified ingredients). In November a prominent Party-run publisher produced a 630-page tome titled “China Model: A New Development Model from the Sixty Years of the People’s Republic”. In January came the more modest “China Model: Experiences and Difficulties”. Another China-model book was launched in April and debated at an expo-related forum in Shanghai. Its enthusiastic authors include Zhao Qizheng, a former top Party propaganda official, and John Naisbitt, an American futurologist.

cash in on    take advantage of or capitalize on

(hypernym) profit, gain, benefit

upsurge   a sudden forceful flow

eclectic
electing what seems best of various styles or ideas

propaganda
information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause

Western publishers have been no less 仍然还是enthused by China’s continued rapid growth. The most recent entry in the field is “The Beijing Consensus, How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century” by Stefan Halper, an American academic. Mr Halper, who has served as an official in various Republican administrations, argues that “just as globalisation is shrinking the world, China is shrinking the West” by quietly limiting the projection of its values. 求解？？？

enthuse
cause to feel enthusiasm

But despite China’s status as “the world’s largest billboard advertisement for the new alternative求解？” of going capitalist and staying autocratic, Party leaders are, as Mr Halper describes it, gripped by a fear of losing control and of China descending into chaos. It is this fear, he says, that is a driving force behind China’s worrying external behaviour. Party rule, the argument runs, depends on economic growth, which in turn depends on resources supplied by unsavoury countries. Politicians in Africa in fact rarely talk about following a “Beijing consensus”. But they love the flow of aid from China that comes without Western lectures about governance and human rights.
autocratic
characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having absolute sovereignty;
unsavoury
morally offensive;not pleasing in odor or taste

The same fear makes Chinese leaders reluctant to wax lyrical about将……说的天花乱坠？可以这样理解吗？ a China model. They are acutely aware of American sensitivity to any talk suggesting the emergence of a rival power and ideology—and conflict with America could wreck China’s economic growth.

In 2003 Chinese officials began talking of the country’s “peaceful rise”, only to drop the term a few months later amid worries that even the word “rise” would upset the flighty Americans. Zhao Qizheng, the former propaganda official, writes that he prefers “China case” to “China model”. Li Junru, a senior Party theorist, said in December that talk of a China model was “very dangerous” because complacency might set in that would sap enthusiasm for further reforms.
complacency
the feeling you have when you are satisfied with yourself; "his complacency was absolutely disgusting"
sap
deplete; "exhaust one's savings"; "We quickly played out our strength"

Some Chinese lament
that this is already happening. Political reform, which the late architect of China’s developmental model, Deng Xiaoping, once argued was essential for economic liberalization 经济自由化, has barely progressed since he crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Liu Yawei of the Carter Centre, an American human-rights group wrote last month that efforts by Chinese scholars to promote the idea of a China model have become “so intense and effective” that political reform has been “swept aside”.
lament (为…)哀悼, 痛哭, 悲伤

Chinese leaders’ fear of chaos suggests they themselves are not convinced that they have found the right path. Talk of a model is made all the harder by？ the stability-threatening problems that breakneck growth engenders, from environmental destruction to rampant corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.好句子~ One of China’s more outspoken直率的 media organisations, Caixin, this week published an article by Joseph Nye, an American academic. In it Mr Nye writes of the risks posed by China’s uncertain political trajectory. “Generations change, power often creates hubris骄傲自大 and appetites sometimes grow with eating,” he says.
Engender ：call forth (synonym) breed, spawn
Rampant：unrestrained and violent
trajectory ：the path followed by an object moving through space (synonym) flight

One Western diplomat, using the term made famous by Mr Nye, describes the expo as a “competition between soft powers”软实力之间的竞争. But if China’s soft power is in the ascendant and America’s declining—as many Chinese commentators 评论员write—the event, which is due to end on October 31st, hardly shows it. True, China succeeded in persuading a record number of countries to take part. But visitor turnout has been far lower than organisers had anticipated. And queues outside America’s dour pavilion have been among the longest.
ascendant ：tending or directed upward;most powerful or important or influential

谦行天下UID: 2797557

【COMMENT】2-2 学习
Business software
Office politics
Microsoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google's challenge
May 13th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO | From The Economist online

ANYONE attending the launch on May 12th of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office software suite could have been forgiven for thinking they had walked into a meeting about meteorology（这个词俺老记不住） rather than technology. All the talk was of clouds—vast data centres that provide cheap and plentiful computing capacity accessible via the internet—and how companies can take advantage of them to boost productivity. In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software.

These initiatives come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing. After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage（改变；杠杆） the cloud to erode its share of the market

Chief（这词用得好） among the pretenders to the throne is Google, which is aggressively seeking to persuade companies to ditch Office and other Microsoft products in favour of its own web-based offerings, called Google Apps. The competition between these twobehemoths（？） is likely to become even more intense as companies loosen their IT purse strings as the economic outlook improves. Google offers some of its web applications free, but these versions lack some of the more sophisticated functions that large companies often need, so it sells them a high-end version of Google Apps for $50 per user per year.

The battle with Google Apps is one that Microsoft cannot afford to lose

For Microsoft, this is a battle that it cannot afford to lose. Office is a big money-spinner for the company and many corporate users are locked into longer-term contracts that guarantee a steady stream of revenue from the software. Small wonder, then, that Stephen Elop, the head of Microsoft’s business division, has described the launch of Office 2010 as “an epic release”.

Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say（这是另一种举例的方式么？）, embed videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering.

Microsoft says GM and Starbucks have chosen its web offerings after rejecting Google's

Mr Elop points out that Microsoft already has 40m paying customers using online services from the company, whereas Google can only boast a fraction of that number. He also claims that firms such as General Motors and Starbucks have decided to embrace Microsoft’s web offerings after weighing them up against Google’s. “The fact that Microsoft has to point to people who considered Google and decided not to go with us is evidence of how far we have come in the business arena,” sniffs one senior Google executive.

There is little doubt that Google, which claims it has over 2m users of its productivity apps, looms large（赫然耸立） in the rearview mirror（后视镜） of Microsoft’s business division. This week the company even cheekily（厚颜无耻的） proposed to firms using Office 2007, the previous release of Microsoft’s business software, that they bolt on Google Apps to get much of the web-based functionality they need, instead of upgrading to Office 2010. Google has also been tweaking its own cloud services（？） to make them run faster and to give users even more of a desktop-like experience.

Yet while Google has been able to sign up some large clients such as Genentech and Motorola, it still gets the lion’s share of its business from small and medium-sized companies. The internet giant argues that this will eventually change as more companies rebel against multiple-year contracts and embrace the flexibility that web-based apps offer. Perhaps, but there are also a host of other companies, including IBM and relatively unknown outfits（全套装备） like Zoho that also have their sights set on this market too. And Microsoft is clearly gearing up（换挡高速） for a fight. Get ready for a truly epic battle in the cloud.

agnes2010UID: 2794922

high-end 高端、高档 25# azure9

azure9UID: 2789030

28# agnes2010 thx~

agnes2010UID: 2794922

【COMMENT】2-2
Studied by Agnes
2010-5-14

Business software
Office politics
Microsoft bids to keep its grip on corporate computing against Google's challenge
May 13th 2010 | SAN FRANCISCO | From The Economist online
Keep a (firm) grip on sth 对……掌握控制

ANYONE attending the launch on May 12th of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office software suite could have been forgiven for thinking they had walked into a meeting about meteorology气象学 rather than technology. All the talk was of clouds—vast data centres that provide cheap and plentiful computing capacity accessible via the internet—and how companies can take advantage of them to boost productivity. In a significant move, Microsoft announced new, web-based versions of popular applications such as Word and Excel as part of the “Office 2010” release, and unveiled changes designed to make it easier for workers to collaborate using its software.
Be of clouds
Boost productivity 提高生产力
Reveil：remove the veil from;make visible;remove the cover from;

These initiatives

新方案 come at a critical time in the evolution of corporate computing. After dominating the office desktop for so long, Microsoft now faces a growing challenge from a variety of companies that are betting they can leverage the cloud to erode its share of the market
come at a critical time在这个关键时刻到来
leverage 促使……盖面
erode：remove soil or rock

Chief among the pretenders to the throne is Google, which is aggressively seeking to persuade companies to ditch Office and other Microsoft products in favour of its own web-based offerings, called Google Apps. The competition between these two behemoths is likely to become even more intense as companies loosen their IT purse strings as the economic outlook improves. Google offers some of its web applications free, but these versions lack some of the more sophisticated functions that large companies often need, so it sells them a high-end version of Google Apps for $50 per user per year.
Chief among the pretenders to the throne 宝座的最大觊觎者
Ditch：forsake ；throw away
Behemoth：巨兽
purse strings 金钱
sophisticated functions先进的功能

The battle with Google Apps is one that Microsoft cannot afford to lose

For Microsoft, this is a battle that it cannot afford to lose. Office is a big money-spinner for the company and many corporate users are locked into longer-term contracts that guarantee a steady stream of revenue from the software. Small wonder, then, that Stephen Elop, the head of Microsoft’s business division, has described the launch of Office 2010 as “an epic release”.
money-spinner：赚钱的人
赚钱的大事业
small wonder：不足为奇
epic：very imposing or impressive

Among other things, the new, web-based version of Office will make it much easier for workers to use documents and spreadsheets on a host of different devices, including smart phones. Microsoft has also tweaked its software to make it easier for people to, say, embed嵌入的 videos in PowerPoint presentations and to integrate data from their social networks into online calendars and e-mail services. And the company plans to offer a free, stripped down version精简的下载形式？ of its web apps that will compete directly with Google’s mass-market offering.
Tweak：adjust finely
stripped ：having only essential or minimal features

Microsoft says GM and Starbucks have chosen its web offerings after rejecting Google's

Mr Elop points out that Microsoft already has 40m paying customers using online services from the company, whereas Google can only boast a fraction of that number. He also claims that firms such as General Motors and Starbucks have decided to embrace Microsoft’s web offerings after weighing them up against Google’s. “The fact that Microsoft has to point to people who considered Google and decided not to go with us is evidence of how far we have come in the business arena,” sniffs one senior Google executive.
Sniff 嗤之以鼻

There is little doubt that Google, which claims it has over 2m users of its productivity apps, looms large in the rearview mirror of Microsoft’s business division. This week the company even cheekily proposed to firms using Office 2007, the previous release of Microsoft’s business software, that they bolt on Google Apps to get much of the web-based functionality they need, instead of upgrading to Office 2010. Google has also been tweaking its own cloud services求解？？ to make them run faster and to give users even more of a desktop-like experience.
Loom：appear very large or occupy a commanding position
in the rearview mirror of：在……的后视镜中

Yet while Google has been able to sign up some large clients such as Genentech and Motorola, it still gets the lion’s share of its business from small and medium-sized companies. The internet giant argues that this will eventually change as more companies rebel against multiple-year contracts and embrace the flexibility that web-based apps offer. Perhaps, but there are also a host of other companies, including IBM and relatively unknown outfits like Zoho that also have their sights set on this market too. And Microsoft is clearly gearing up for a fight. Get ready for a truly epic battle in the cloud.

rebel against     反抗

gear up：make ready or suitable or equip in advance for a particular purpose or for some use