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  3. It is the "new frontier", says Japan’s trade ministry. Japanese firms have at last noticed that emerging markets are growing muc

It is the "new frontier", says Japan’s trade ministry. Japanese firms have at last noticed that emerging markets are growing muc

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问题     It is the "new frontier", says Japan’s trade ministry. Japanese firms have at last noticed that emerging markets are growing much faster than rich ones. And though they were late to the dance, they brought some nifty moves.
    Profits at Japan’s 559 major listed companies surged by 46% in the most recent quarter according to Nikkei, a financial-information provider. That is a fourfold increase from a year ago, and largely due to soaring sales in emerging markets. Many Japanese firms that lost money in 2009 have revived their fortunes by selling to the new global middle class. Strong demand in Asia helped. Sony, an electronics firm, posted a healthy ￥79 billion profit in the most recent quarter, reversing a pretax loss of ￥33 billion a year ago. Its revenue from emerging markets grew by about 40%; sales in Brazil nearly doubled. Shiseido, Japan’s biggest cosmetics maker also opened a factory in Vietnam, where newly prosperous lips are crying for gloss.
    Countries outside North America and Europe will account for 80% of global growth between 2000 and 2050. Western consumers have become more frugal. Japan has been stagnant for two decades and its population is shrinking. Small wonder corporate Japan is looking elsewhere. Its traditional wares are ill-suited for the new frontier. Many are costly, complex and easily undercut by simpler gadgets from South Korea, Taiwan District and China. Japanese firms have long used poor countries merely as production bases and then shipped their products to rich ones. That model no longer works.
    To prosper on the new frontier, Japanese firm must adapt. Panasonic, an electronics firm, is overhauling both its products and its organization. Instead of maintaining strict management divisions by territory, the company now thinks about product lines by temperate and tropical climate zones. Executives from South America visit their peers in Malaysia each quarter to swap ideas.
    Difficulties still lurk. The strong yen—which has gained 14% this year to touch ￥86 for $1—hurts exports. However, it makes mergers and acquisitions cheaper: Japanese firms have spent more than $11 billion on deals in poor countries so far this year, already surpassing the total in 2009. By shifting production abroad and souring locally, Japanese companies can probably cope. Another difficulty is managing a global workforce. Labor unrest forced Toyota and Honda to suspend operations in China this summer. At home workers are so docile that Japanese managers are often unprepared for such spats. So Japanese firms are rushing to hire foreign talents. Relatively low pay for bosses and a lack of English-speaking staff make this hard, but some firms are making progress.
    Having reengineered their products for emerging markets, Japanese firms may now have to shake up their corporate culture. They devolve too little power to local staff and rarely promote non-Japanese to top management. They take decisions slowly, by consensus and after endless memos to head office. To survive in emerging markets corporate Japan must learn to be nimble.
The author’s attitude towards Japanese firms is one of______.
选项 A、criticism
B、objectiveness
C、satisfaction
D、skepticism
答案D
解析 属态度推断题。作者在原文既陈述了日企在新兴市场的出色表现，也谈到了日企在面向新兴市场改革过程中所遇到的局限性和困境。根据之前提到过的解题技巧，选项D符合题意。
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