Read the passage and answer the questions that follow. China initiated its economic miracle by opening to the outside world, but now it is nurturing domestic tech giants by barring outside competition. Foreign visitors cannot open Google or Facebook, a weirdly isolating experience... But unlike the Soviet Union, which failed in a similar strategy, China is effectively creating a new consumer culture behind protectionist walls as a tool of political control and an engine of economic growth....Anchored by internet giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, the tech sector (was) not only counterbalancing the decline in older industries such as steel and aluminium but was also largely debt free. So, the bigger the digital economy, the greater is China’s capacity to manage mounting debts in the old economy and keep growth alive... By 2017, tech already accounted for as large a share of output in China as in Germany... Yet on balance, tech is probably creating more professions than it destroys. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper estimates that after subtracting the jobs it eliminates, digitalisation accounts for up to half of all job growth. Alibaba platforms alone host millions of small companies, which over the past decade have added 30 million jobs-more than China has lost in heavy industry. China’s tech revolution was made possible by two of the forces that were expected to slow the economy. The population may be aging, but it still provides a vast market in which tech start-ups can blossom. And though growth normally slows when countries attain a middle-class income, in China the new middle class pro vides the main customers for new mobile internet services. No other country has this combination. India has the population, not the income. Brazil has the income, not the population. And these democratic societies are also far more suspicious of government surveillance than China is. Witness the widespread controversy over the rollout of biometric IDs in India. In China, at least outside Xinjiang, the relatively mild concern about personal data has helped fuel the boom in digital payments and e-commerce. China is the world’s largest e-commerce market by far, and fleets of motorbikes painted in the colours of online delivery companies park five to six rows deep outside malls and office towers. To offset the shrinking of its work force, China needed to increase the productivity of the workers who remain. And as the tech boom took off around 2015, productivity growth began to recover after flat lining for nearly a decade. The IMF paper argues that the economy is bound to slow in coming years, but will slow much more sharply if digitalisation stalls than if it continues at the current rapid pace. No economy can rise in an unbroken line forever, and mounting debts and a declining labour force still weigh on China. By making online loans so readily available to Chinese households, tech may compound the risk of financial crisis.

Question

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow. China initiated its economic miracle by opening to the outside world, but now it is nurturing domestic tech giants by barring outside competition. Foreign visitors cannot open Google or Facebook, a weirdly isolating experience... But unlike the Soviet Union, which failed in a similar strategy, China is effectively creating a new consumer culture behind protectionist walls as a tool of political control and an engine of economic growth....Anchored by internet giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, the tech sector (was) not only counterbalancing the decline in older industries such as steel and aluminium but was also largely debt free. So, the bigger the digital economy, the greater is China’s capacity to manage mounting debts in the old economy and keep growth alive...  By 2017, tech already accounted for as large a share of output in China as in Germany... Yet on balance, tech is probably creating more professions than it destroys. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper estimates that after subtracting the jobs it eliminates, digitalisation accounts for up to half of all job growth. Alibaba platforms alone host millions of small companies, which over the past decade have added 30 million jobs-more than China has lost in heavy industry. China’s tech revolution was made possible by two of the forces that were expected to slow the economy. The population may be aging, but it still provides a vast market in which tech start-ups can blossom. And though growth normally slows when countries attain a middle-class income, in China the new middle class pro vides the main customers for new mobile internet services. No other country has this combination. India has the population, not the income. Brazil has the income, not the population. And these democratic societies are also far more suspicious of government surveillance than China is. Witness the widespread controversy over the rollout of biometric IDs in India.  In China, at least outside Xinjiang, the relatively mild concern about personal data has helped fuel the boom in digital payments and e-commerce. China is the world’s largest e-commerce market by far, and fleets of motorbikes painted in the colours of online delivery companies park five to six rows deep outside malls and office towers. To offset the shrinking of its work force, China needed to increase the productivity of the workers who remain. And as the tech boom took off around 2015, productivity growth began to recover after flat lining for nearly a decade. The IMF paper argues that the economy is bound to slow in coming years, but will slow much more sharply if digitalisation stalls than if it continues at the current rapid pace.  No economy can rise in an unbroken line forever, and mounting debts and a declining labour force still weigh on China. By making online loans so readily available to Chinese households, tech may compound the risk of financial crisis.

cdquestions Admin · Accepted Answer

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The overall message in the passage is:

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The Correct Option is C

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Brazil and India have not been able to emulate China’s successful expansion in e-commerce for all of the following reasons, EXCEPT:

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The Correct Option is B

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The author mentions the 'fleets of motorbikes' (paragraph 4) to indicate the:

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The Correct Option is B

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All of the following can be deduced about the Chinese economy, EXCEPT that:

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The Correct Option is D

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Contrary to the experience in other countries, digitisation in China has:

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The Correct Option is B

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