SAT Practice9a5b800c-9469-4023-8098-70ef352fd380
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Questions come from the Bluebook question bank.

3,5003,0002,5002,0001,5001,0005000Imports (in hundredsof millions of dollars)ordinary importsprocessing with assemblyprocessing with inputsChina’s Imports by Type, 2000–2006Import types200020032006
  • For each data category, the following bars are shown: 
    • 2000 
    • 2003 
    • 2006 
  • All values are approximate.
  • The Imports data for the 3 categories are as follows:
    • ordinary imports:
      • 2000: 1,000 hundred million dollars
      • 2003: 1,700 hundred million dollars
      • 2006: 3,300 hundred million dollars
    • processing with assembly:
      • 2000: 250 hundred million dollars
      • 2003: 350 hundred million dollars
      • 2006: 750 hundred million dollars
    • processing with inputs:
      • 2000: 650 hundred million dollars
      • 2003: 1,250 hundred million dollars
      • 2006: 2,300 hundred million dollars

A student is researching the Chinese government’s 1992 shift to a market economy that emphasizes trade liberalization. One means of trade liberalization involves expanding from ordinary imports into an emphasis on processing imports, which have two types: processing with assembly (in which a firm obtains raw materials from a foreign trading partner without payment and sells the final goods to that partner, charging for assembly) and processing with inputs (in which a firm expends capital to buy raw materials from a trading partner, processes them into final goods, and sells those goods to whichever trading partner it chooses). The student asserts that while initial efforts at trade liberalization were shaped by Chinese firms’ limited capital, this situation resolved during the 2000s.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support the student’s assertion?