Passage 1
Force of the Multinationals
Direct investment by multinational companies is becoming hugely important force in the world economy. In essence, a combination of factors, such as the development of global communications and a change in the political climate towards multinationals, is bringing in an era of true global manufacturing. A company such as Siemens may now start making product in Germany then ship it to Malaysia for the labor-intensive final stages of manufacture. The strategy by Japanese companies of locating production in cheaper Far Eastern countries such as Thailand has done much to integrate the economies of the region. US companies were setting up production in Mexico, for similar reasons, before negotiations on the NAFTA had even started. There is an important distinction to be made between the kind of integration based on trade, which is relatively simple, and the far more complex links involved in global manufacturing The report says that"as integration moves from shallow trade-based linkages to deep international production-based linkage under the common governance, the traditional division between integration at the corporate and country levels begins to break down.”
Foreign direct investment tends to transfer assets from the developed world to the developing world. But the pattern is not entirely simple. Big shifts have occurred in the composition of foreign direct investment by sector. Increasing investment is going into services and high-tech manufacture, rather than basic manufacture and natural resources. As might be expected foreign direct investment in the developed world is mostly in the former category, whereas in the developing world the emphasis is on the latter. It seems countries have to reach a basic level of sophistication before they can get in the act. Simple cash incentives to set up production in a country have little effect, other than on margin. In addition, the increasing sophistication of global production means that cheap labor is often not a deciding factor either.
International production-based integration is better than trade-based integration.
A、正确
B、错误
【正确答案】：B
【名师解析】:题目中的观点是"International production-based integration is better than trade-based integration." 这个观点认为基于国际生产的一体化比基于贸易的一体化更优越。然而，根据文章内容，我们可以看到跨国公司的直接投资正在成为世界经济中的重要力量，并且全球制造正在兴起。文章提到了跨国公司如何通过在不同国家进行生产以利用各地的优势，例如成本、技术等。同时，文章也指出了外国直接投资的流向正在发生变化，越来越多的投资流向服务业和高科技制造业，而不是基础制造业和自然资源。
文章中并没有明确指出国际生产一体化比贸易一体化更好，而是强调了全球制造一体化的复杂性和深度，以及它对传统公司和国家层面整合的区分的打破。因此，题目中的观点是一个有争议的陈述，不能简单地判断为正确或错误。然而，根据题目答案B（错误），我们可以推断出，题目可能要求学生理解文章中关于全球化和跨国公司投资的复杂性，以及不能简单地将国际生产一体化视为优于贸易一体化。
因此，正确的解析应该是：题目中的观点是错误的，因为文章并没有明确支持国际生产一体化优于贸易一体化的观点，而是强调了全球化制造的复杂性和深度，以及跨国公司投资流向的变化，这表明不能简单地比较两种整合方式的优劣。
