2024.1.13《经济学人》节选双语精读【商业篇】学习指南

The world this week|Business

【1】China became the world’s biggest exporter of vehiclesin 2023, according to the China Passenger Car Association. The association thinks that China exported nearly 5.3m vehicles last year, accelerating it past Japan, which is thought to have sold 4.3m vehicles abroad. Petrol-powered vehicles accounted for the bulk of the exports (notably to Russia), but electric vehicles are taking a growing share of China’s overseas market. The CPCAreckons that 6.1m full-electric vehicles were sold in China last year, up by 22% from 2022.

Backseat driver

【2】As Chinese carmakers move into top gear, Volkswagenfinds itself falling behind in China, which was once a source of ambitious growth for the German company. VW’s sales in China rose by just 1.6% in 2023 (the overall domestic market grew by 5.6%), though the country still accounts for a third of its global market. VWis also struggling to keep up with demand for EVs. It delivered 394,000 fully electric vehicles worldwide in 2023, far behind the 1.6m that were sold by BYD,China’s biggest electric-car maker.

【3】Boeing’schief executive, Dave Calhoun, promised that the aerospace company would be completely transparent in helping an investigation into an incident in which a panel came off a 737Max 9passenger jet that had just taken off from Portland. Nobody was injured on the Alaska Airlines flight, which returned to the airport with a gaping hole in its side. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded some 737Max 9s while inspections were carried out. The investigation’s initial focus is on the bolts that secured the panel, which fell into a teacher’s garden in Portland.

【4】Open AI responded in detail to a lawsuit lodged by the New York Timesthat claims the startup used the newspaper’s content to create and train its chatbot, ChatGPT.In a blog post OpenAI said the lawsuit was “without merit”, and that the Timeswas “not telling the full story”.

【5】Meanwhile, the European Union announced an initial probe into whether Microsoft’shuge investment in OpenAIfalls foul of its law on mergers. Britain’s antitrust regulator opened a similar review in December.

【6】America’s Securities and Exchange Commission approved applications from some of the world’s biggest financial companies, such as BlackRock, to start offering exchange-traded fundstied to bitcoin for the first time, a huge boost for advocates of cryptocurrencies. The day before the announcement the X account of the SECwas hackedby an attacker who posted a fake announcement that the regulator had already approved the ETFs, causing bitcoin’s price to rise briefly by more than $1,000.

【7】Hewlett Packard Enterpriseagreed to buy Juniper Networksin a deal valued at $14bn. The acquisition will double HPE’s computer-networking business, and it also obtains Juniper’s artificial-intelligence unit, Mist AI,which uses machine learning to improve user access to wireless systems.

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