Measuring the performance of British business in Asia from the late 1800s to the present is difficult. Profits offer one measure, but collecting and comparing the profits and dividends (shares of profits distributed to stockholders) of thousands of enterprises present problems of data and interpretation. British overseas banks, for example, all maintained large hidden reserves to which transfers were made before published profits were declared. The actual dividends paid to stockholders were subject to factors such as taxation policy or exchange fluctuations or other factors. For example, the high dividends paid in India by many British managing companies in the early 1920s were more a response to stockholders' demands for short-term profit-taking of earnings the companies had retained from the First World War years—coupled with low rates of dividend taxation in India and a highly favorable currency exchange rate for the Indian rupee against British sterling—than the result of spectacularly successful enterprise during the period 1919 to 1921. Comparisons between different industries in different Asian countries present further difficulties.

Perhaps a more satisfactory measure of business performance is market share. In the late 1800s, British enterprise was dominant in many Asian countries; in Iran as late as the 1920s, the entire modern business sector was under British control. Although it declined at different rates in different countries, by the 1980s British business no longer played such a central role in the market of any Asian country.


According to the author of the passage, which of the following was true of British business in Iran during the twentieth century?


British business was more central to the modern business sector of Iran in the 1920s than it was to the business sector of other Asian countries.

British business dominated the modern business sector of Iran through the mid-twentieth century.

British business in Iran was less subject to the effects of fluctuations in currency exchange rates than it was in other Asian countries.

British business in Iran declined more slowly than it did in other Asian countries.

British business played a larger role in the Iranian economy in the 1920s than it did in the 1980s.

考题讲解

此讲解的内容由AI生成,还未经人工审阅,仅供参考。

正确答案是 B。由文章可知,到1920年,英国企业在伊朗占据了现代商业领域的主导地位,而到1980年,英国商业在亚洲的任何一个国家都不再发挥如此重要的作用。选项B正好符合文章所说,因此是正确答案。

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