四级复习资料大全阅读(20)_大学英语阅读

四级复习资料大全阅读(20)

　　Passage 10

　　Rich Immigrants in Asias financial capitals generally have life pretty easy. But this summer, those in Hong Kong and Singapore are starting to sweat. The problem? Sizzling real-estate markets that make even bankers blink, and international schools packed like the Tokyo subway at rush hour. One-bedroom flats in Hong Kongs most fashionable buildings now go for $5,000 per month. Office rents in Singapore have shot up 105 percent in the past year the fastest appreciation rate in the world. For workers with kids, the picture is particularly bleak. Incoming students at international schools now land not in classes but on long waiting lists unless their parents jump the queue by purchasing debentures that have sold for as much as $120,000 in Hong Kong.

　　Asias dueling financial hubs invest a lot of capital real and emotional in whats often cast as a zero-sum contest for the affection of foreign companies. Yet both cities have done so well wooing them of late that the major threat facing each isnt the other, but bottlenecks in the foreign infrastructure common to both. High-end housing costs are pushing past records set before the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, prompting Singapores founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, to lament, We must check this hike in rents or we will lose our competitiveness.

　　Talent is getting tougher to find as both economies near full employment. Office rents are driving even the richest investment banks to seek cheaper alternatives to prime downtown addresses. And as both cities increase their populations by luring hundreds of thousands of additional outsiders over the coming decade, locals are getting squeezed. There may be a political cost if Singaporeans feel priced out by foreigners, warns Charles Chong, head of a parliamentary committee on national development in Singapore.