英语高级口语教程(12)

China's irrational employment and personnel system prevents some from fully using the skills and knowledge they have acquired abroad.

Ai Xiaobai, with a PhD in Physics, wrote to eleven institutions of higher learning in

China. Two of them refused him and the others did not even answer him. Just before deciding to go back to America, he was hired by a Chinese research institute which knew of him.

2. Personal Progress and Job-hopping

In many parts of the world, personal influence is almost essential in getting ahead. One needs a "godfather? a "sponsor". Here that is not true. Naturally all people use influence sometimes, but one rarely advances far on that basis alone in the United States. Here traits which lead to success are generally considered to be the willingness to work hard (at any kind of job), scholarship or skill, initiative, an agreeable and outgoing personality. In other words even in the realm of personal progress, this is a "do-it-yourself" society. By and large, success is neither inherited nor bestowed. This means, therefore, that our employment practices are different from those in many other countries.

In some nations it is considered disloyal to quit a job; deep reciprocal loyalties exist between employee and employer (recipient and patron? in many cases); lifelong job security and family honor are frequently involved.

This is not true in the United States. "Job-hopping" is part of our constant mobility. We consider it a " right " to be able to better ourselves, to move upward, to jump from company to company if we can keep qualifying for more responsible (and therefore better) jobs.

This interchangeability of personnel seems unreasonable to some members of foreign nations. Where are our roots? How can we be so cold and inhuman? "We act? " some say, as if we were dealing with machines, not humans? They do not understand that a great many Americans like to move about. New jobs present new challenges, new opportunities, new friends, new experiences-often a new part of the country.

The employer may be quite content too. Perhaps he has had the best of that man's thinking; a new person may bring in fresh ideas, improved skills, or new abilities. Then, too, a newcomer will probably start at a lower salary for he will have no seniority. Hopping is so readily accepted here, in fact, that a good man may bounce back and forth among two or three corporations, being welcomed back to his original company more than once through his career, each time at a different level.

3. Residents Go Overseas to Seek Their Fortunes

Shanghai has become a favourite investment spot with foreigners eager to get a financial foothold in China.

And with the development of its export-oriented economy, the city looks set to become an international trade and financial centre on the west bank of the Pacific Ocean.