Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)
Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1．For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked

A.,
B.,
C.and
D.．For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.
So Near and Yet So Far
In many examinations, 90% is an excellent score, deserving a prize and a handshake from the head．In Geneva this week, only full marks would do, and the world's trade ministers failed．No matter that they came closer to a deal than anyone should have expected．No matter that they stuck at it for nine days and several nights, in the longest ministerial meeting in the history of the World Trade Organization (WTO)．No matter, too, that this time they parted in stunned disbelief, heads shaking, rather than in acrimony(刻薄), quarrel and spite, as at Cancun in 2003．They managed 'convergence' on 18 of the 20 topics set before them by Pascal Lamy, the WTO's director-general, but they stumbled on the 19th, a device for protecting farmers in developing countries against surges in imports．They never reached the 20th, cotton．Failed.
You can construct a plausible argument that the collapse of yet another set of talks on the Doha round, which is now coming up to seven years old, is of little importance．While the world's trade ministers have alternated between talking and not talking to one another about Doha, the world's businesspeople have carried on regardless: the growth of global commerce has outstripped the hitherto (到前为止) healthy pace of global GDP．Developing countries in particular have continued to open up to imports and foreign investment．You might say that not much was on offer in Geneva anyway: one study put the ual benefits at maybe $70 billion, a drop in the ocean of the world's GDP．Global stock markets, with so much else on their minds, either didn't notice or didn't care．On July 29th, the day the talks broke up, the S&P 500 index rose by 2.3%.
Plausible, but wrong．For a start, the lowish estimates of the economic benefits of the round miss out two things．One is the value of the unpredictable dynamic benefits of more open markets．Access to more customers allows exporters to exploit economies of scale．Competition encourages not only specialization, the classic result of more open trade, but also increased productivity．The other is what you might call the' option value' of the Doha round．The WTO inhabits a sort of parallel universe in which countries negotiate not on what tariffs and subsidies will actually be, but on maximum (or' bound') rates and amounts．Although many countries have cut tariffs and farm．subsidies -- if only, in the latter case, because of rising food prices -- too few have turned these cuts into commitments．Tighter binding would cramp their ability to turn back to protection．It would have made up the bulk of a Doha deal.
Do you care about the beans or the beings?
Also on offer were benefits that are easier to visualize．Some cuts in bound tariffs would have bitten into actual rates．There would have been much less' tariff escalation(增加)' -- a nasty practice, by which higher tariffs are levied on successive stages of production．Raw coffee beans may be tariff-free, but roasted beans incur a higher levy, and so on as they are ground, getting rid of caffeine and so forth．Move up the value chain, and you pay．Some developing countries -- in Latin America, especially Brazil, and in Africa too -- are seething that a deal slipped away.
Given all this, the inability of ministers to agree, having come so close, seems unfathomable(难解 )．Belief is all the more beggared when you look at the wider world．The global econo