Question

2 - Please, read the passage below to answer this question.


Every so often, a grand thesis captures the world's imagination, at least until it is swept away by events or by a newer, more plausible thesis. The latest one to do so, in
policy think tanks, universities, foreign ministries, corporate boardrooms, editorial offices, and international conference centers, is that America's time of global dominance
is finished, and that new powers, such as China, India, and Russia, are poised to take over. It's an idea that has had as much currency within the United States as elsewhere.
All great empires set too much store by predictions of their imminent demise. Perhaps, as the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy suggested in his poem "Waiting for the
Barbarians," empires need the sense of peril to give them a reason to go on. Why spend so much money and effort if not to keep the barbarians at bay?
Still, the current economic growth of China -and also of India and Russia - is impressive. In "Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our
Next Decade" (Harcourt; $26), the former Economist editor Bill Emmott refers to a World Bank analysis predicting that both China and India "could almost triple their
economic output" in the next ten years or so. By the late twenty-twenties, China could overtake the United States as the world's biggest economy. The spectacle of Chinese
turbo-capitalism is inspiring Marco Polo-like awe in some Western commentators. Mark Leonard, the author of "What Does China Think?" (PublicAffairs; $22.95), reports,
with more enthusiasm than plausibility, that a "town the size of London shoots up in the Pearl River Delta every year." Parag Khanna, in "The Second World" (Random
House; $29), informs, rather gleefully, that "Asia is shaping the world's destiny - and exposing the flaws of the grand narrative of Western civilization in the process.
Because of the East, the West is no longer master of its own fate."
It has been a while since policy mavens have used terms like "destiny" with a straight face. But that's the kind of language we are beginning to hear, now that American
"hyper-power" (as a former French foreign minister liked to call it) is being challenged. There are good reasons for skepticism about such grand forecasts. Economic
statistics in autocracies such as China are notoriously unreliable, and it's worth recalling all those breathless predictions, a few decades ago, of Japan's imminent global
domination. But, even if we aren't so quick to write off America's cultural, political, economic, and military clout, the fact that the American economy has to rely on
infusions of cash from China, Singapore, and the Gulf states suggests that something important is taking place.
Source: Buruma, L., "After America: Is the West being overtaken by the rest?" The New Yorker, 21 de abril de 2008, p.126.


We must be wary of making predictions such as those mentioned above because:


a) Destiny and future are always uncertain, and progress is not always linear,


b) Western nations are no longer in control of their destiny


c) The information on which they are based may be questionable.


d) The United States may not need cash infusions from China in the future.


e) We do not know what China thinks​

Answer 1

Resposta:

b) Western nations are no longer in control of their destiny

Explicação:

Trecho do texto:

"Asia is shaping the world's destiny - and exposing the flaws of the grand narrative of Western civilization in the process.

Because of the East, the West is no longer master of its own fate."

Answer 2

2 - Please, read the passage (Leia o texto e responda)

A resposta correta é a letra B

The text reveals how it was undone and the consequences of the end of the apparent economic equilibrium that existed before and during the period known as the Cold War.

During this conflict between the two economic superpowers of the time, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, the world was forced to choose two sides.

One of them was capitalism, an economic system in which the richest prey on the poorest, and socialism, where government dominated rich and poor.

After the war, which was won by the U.S.A., capitalism now dominates the planet, making the rich even more affluent and the poor more and more miserable.

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