English Quiz for Bank Exams 2015 – Set 38

Directions (Q. 1-15): Read the following passage carefully and answer
the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold in the passage to
help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.

It is difficult to compare
countries because various factors such as size, culture, history, geography,
natural endowments, geopolitics and internal polity come 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
country for entry into the ranks of mid-level developed nations by the middle
of the twenty-first 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 can 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 their 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 China’s
immediate economic and social needs. The Chinese vision is therefore aimed at
exploiting state-of-arts science and technology to enhance the nation’s overall
power and strength, to improve the people’s living standard, 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 defence applications. Some
of these technologies are critical for improving the feature of key
conventional weapons. Some technologies are meant for enhancing future military
capabilities. Other factors 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 effective self-defence and
nuclear deterrent capabilities and to enable parity in defence, science and
technology with the advanced world.