reading comprehension Practice Questions Answers Test with Solutions & More Shortcuts

DIRECTIONS:

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words in the passage are printed in bold to help you to locate them easily while answering some of the questions.

PASSAGE

It is difficult to compare countries because various factors such as size, culture, history geography, natural endowment geopolitics and internal polity comes into play. There are some goals which can be achieved by smaller countries but sometimes smaller countries find it difficult to embark upon certain big technological plans even if they have the funds, because the size of the domestic market is too small. If we consider the bigger countries, the closest comparison to India is China, though there are many crucial differences.

The Chinese vision is to prepare the county for entry into the ranks of midlevel developed nations by the middle of the twentyfirst century. Acceleration of the nation's economic growth and social development by relying on advances in science and technology is pivotal in this Documents describing the Chinese vision state that science and technology constitute premier productive forces and represent, a great revolutionary power that cm propel economic and social development. It is interesting to note that the main lessons the Chinese have drawn from their past performance is their failure to promote science and technology as strategic tools for empowerment.

They also point to the absence of mechanisms and motivations in theft economic activity to promote dependence on science and technology. Similarly, they hold that their scientific and technological efforts were not oriented towards economic growth. As a consequence, they conclude a large number of scientific and technological achievements, were not converted into productive forces as they were too far removed from Chinas immediate economic and social needs. The Chinese vision is therefore aimed at exploiting state fart science and technology to enhance the nation's overall power and strength, to improve the peoples living standards, to focus on resolving problems encountered in large-scale Industrial and agricultural production and to effectively control and alleviate pressures brought on by population, resources and the environment. By the year 2000, China had aimed at bringing the main industrial sectors up to the technological levels achieved by the developed countries in the 1970s or 80s and by, 2020 to the level they would have attained by the early twenty-first century. The aim is to bridge the overall gap with the advanced world. There is a special emphasis on research and development of high technologies that would find defense applications.

Some of these technologies are critical for Improving the features of key conventional weapons. Some technologies are meant for enhancing future military capabilities. Other efforts are aimed at maintaining , the momentum to develop capabilities for cutting edge defence technologies. They call for unremitting efforts in this regard with the aim of maintaining of festive self-defense and nuclear deterrent capabilities and to enable parity in defence, science and technology with the advanced world.