Online purchases have soared during the Chinese New Year holiday.

   It’s the dead of winter in Shanghai. Delivery man Liu Jia and his colleagues start the day when most of people are still asleep. Working at a distribution point of a shopping website in Shanghai, they promise to deliver products within three hours of an order being placed. “I buy most of my grocery online, especially the heavy items. It’s convenient and cheap compared to the supermarket in my neighborhood,” Customer Chen Hong said. Orders such as these have increased for the New Year, forcing Liu Jia to work around the clock. “The orders are usually rice, laundry detergent（洗涤剂）, tissue paper and snacks, mostly food and articles for everyday use,” Liu Jia said.

According to an industry report, China’s B2C（Business to Customer） online sales are growing at an annual rate of 25 percent. Competition between online giants like Taobao and Jingdong is now fiercer than ever. “The advantage of online shopping is that customers can buy products easily. So the competition is about: firstly, the range of products; secondly, the depth under each category of products; third, the price and user experience,” Pan Biao, vice president of YHD. com, said. E-commerce is one of China’s fastest growing sectors. It’s changed people’s buying habits, and even their living habits. And it’s had a huge impact on the retail industry. To make online shopping more convenient, major sites are investing heavily to build payment systems and logistics（物流）networks.

On average, a retailer now can deliver goods to the majority of cities within 3 days, and to towns and more remote areas in the country within a week. “Competition will produce a number of good companies, making better products and services that customers need. In the field of E-commerce, we are leading the world in terms of products, services and industry development,” Liu Yinbin, associate professor with Dept of Information Management, Shanghai University, said. Experts also say customers are increasingly making their online purchases from mobile devices, opening up vast new opportunities and competition for retailers.

Progress in agriculture moves at different rates around the globe. In some places, it moves swiftly. In others, the pace is slow. But everywhere, people depend on farmers to provide the necessities of food and clothing.

Since the 1800s, new machines, chemicals, and farming methods have been making farms more and more productive. Now, the farms in western' Europe produce the greatest amount of food per acre in the world. Farmers in the United States are also very productive. In this country, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 78 people.

Many countries are still looking for ways to help themselves grow more food. In 1995, the United Nations began helping farmers in Eritrea. These farmers began using fertilizers, new farming techniques, and better seeds. By 1997, many farmers in Eritrea were able to grow two to four times more wheat than before. But experts are still searching for ways .to help Eritrea. For example, because Eritrea gets little rain, scientists are searching for crops that grow quickly and resist droughts.

In northern Uganda, farmers now have a better way to harvest the cassava root, which is their most important crop. Until recently, it took a week to cut, peel, wash, and dry a bitter cassava root. Farmers did this to get rid of a poison called cyanide, which is in the roots. But now, with hand-held tin graters (粗齿木锉)，farmers can make a cassava root safe to eat in just one day. This is an important change, because sometimes people in Uganda arc dying of hunger. They cannot wait one week for a cassava root.

The same farming improvements do not help everywhere. Some countries, like Senegal, need irrigation systems to distribute water. Other countries, like Eritrea, need machinery (机器) that can process larger amounts of crops at a time. In each place that people are hungry, people will need a different solution.

I love seeing Europeans line up in airports to applaud arriving refugees. But humanitarianism (人道主义) will not guide policy for long. We liberals need to argue from Europe’s self-interest: our continent has the need, the space and the ability to accept people.                   

Many European countries are gradually turning into old people’s homes. Germany, Italy, Spain and others have some of the lowest birth rates in human history. It is predicted that about one-third of their populations will be aged over 65 in 2050. Germany needs to import at least 350,000 people a year to keep its workforce stable. Suddenly, young ambitious workers are pouring into the country as if called by a genie (精灵) with a lamp. No wonder Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, has been more welcoming than David Cameron, British Prime Minister. But all over Europe, carers for old people are already in need. Norway found oil under the seabed but it would have been better off if it had discovered 50,000 nurses there instead.

Many rightwingers think we have reached our limits. This feeling is widespread. And it’s true that Western Europe is one of the most densely populated regions on earth. Indeed, density has long been Europe’s unique selling point: with so many people of different nations closely packed together, we have always traded goods and exchanged ideas fast. That’s why the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries happened here.          

But we have plenty more room. Many European cities are n’t dense enough. Now east Germany, north-western Spain and gorgeous mountain villages in Italy are losing people. Lots of cities have unused industrial land.                   

   Humans inhabit a slice of the EU’s territory. Only about 2.5 per cent of the EU’s land is used for housing, estimates the European Commission. By contrast, a whopping 43 per cent was used for agriculture in 2009, it says. That’s too much. We could turn more land into forest or into green landscapes where people can relax and play. Making that transition is feasible because we now use agricultural land inefficiently.                              

   Migrants often spend years locked up together in serious government-funded “migrant centers”. However, the way to learn a new country’s language, make friends and find work is to live with a local. This crisis has shown that lots of Europeans are willing to take refugees into their homes. After Iceland’s government said it could take only 50 Syrian refugees, many Icelanders came forward offering to take a far greater number into their own homes. People aren’t just sitting around waiting for government to do something.                     

We need migrants, and we can accommodate them. If opponents just don’t like foreigners, they should say so instead of pretending to be hardheaded pragmatists (实用主义者).

A

    Fund Tianhong  Zenglibao has become the first fund in China to hit 100 billion yuan (＄16.30  billion) of sales thanks to its cooperation with Yu’ebao,  Alibaba’s wealth management product.

    Alipay(支付宝), attached to the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, announced in June it would offer its users the option to directly invest with the private Tianhong Fund using spare cash from Alipay accounts. The business is called Yu’ebao.

    The past five months have seen this fund blossom, owing to the prosperous Internet e-commerce platform, and the Singles Day shopping spree on November 11 had helped Yu’ebao. In the process of a deal on Taobao, once the buyer pays for the order, his or her money is first accepted by Alipay, then after he or she receives the goods, a final confirmation is made and Alipay then gives the money to the seller. If a buyer forgets to confirm payment, the money is transferred into the seller’s account after 10 days by the system.

    The Singles Day had a total volume of 35 billion yuan (＄5.75  billion) and thus a large amount of money passed through Alipay’s account. Analysts estimated that Alipay may have also bought the fund using the extra income , which powerfully enlarged the scale of Yu’ebao. Profit purchasing investors tend to choose safe financial management tools. The relatively stable yields of Yu’ebao is favored by most customers, the report said.

    Chinese e-commerence giant Alibaba allows consumers to invest their spare cash in the money market funds through its Alipay online payment service. The product, called Yu’ebao, or “Leftovers Treasure”, has netted 130 billion yuan so far, making the fund’s management firm, Tianhong Fund, the country’s largest fund management company.

    Meanwhile, due to the cooperation with Alipay, the management scale of Tianhong monetary fund has doubled from 55.653 billion yuan at the end of September to over 100 billion yuan . During the Singles Day, the frequency of payment of Alipay and Yu’ebao exceeded 188 million and 16.79 million with total transaction volume at 35billion yuan and 6 billion yuan.

    C

The following card includes a brief summary and a short assessment of a research paper. It can provide a guide for further reading on the topic.

Over the past ten years, the E-commerce revolution has transformed the way we shop to the point where you don’t even have to get dressed and make contact(接触) with another human to find a great deal! Although the amount of time and money we spend online grows every year, the E-commerce experience has changed very little since its beginning.

    In the beginning, E-commerce was expected to transform the way we shop. In many ways it has lived up to that expectation, but still lacks many of the basic virtues like those in-store shopping experience. For instance, if you shop regularly at your favorite chocolate, or fitness equipment store, it is likely that the employees or owner will get to know you. They will remember what you have purchased, become familiar with your particular taste or workout preference, and suggest items that may be of interest to you.

    Although many websites do remember your name, the last item you purchased, or suggest additional items you may want, the experience as a whole is still somewhat predictable, cold and calculated. Completely lacking is the human element, the element that sells to you, or convinces you to change your mind. There is no bargaining and there are no surprises. In this regard, E-commerce has been unable to provide the same experience that shoppers take delight in. Thanks to some dynamic web technologies, all this is due to change in the near future.

    Imagine visiting your favorite online store and coming across all kinds of devices. This is something you have been dreaming about for the past three weeks, so you read all about it, examine every photo, and experiment. Then after twenty minutes of consideration, you decide not to buy it, and return to your Facebook page. Had you been in an actual store talking to a live person, that individual may have been able to convince you to make the purchase by sweetening the deal or lowering the price. You would have been transformed from an observer to the proud new owner. But because you're shopping online, a situation which would normally have been an easy sale has become instead, a missed opportunity for both you and the merchant.