Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia.* Jinshanzhuang* —Hong Kong–based import/export firms—likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.

Question

Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia.* Jinshanzhuang* —Hong Kong–based import/export firms—likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
Choose 1 answer:
Choose 1 answer:
(Choice A)   It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence. 
A
It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.
(Choice B)   It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive. 
B
It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive.
(Choice C)   It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on. 
C
It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on.
(Choice D)   It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence. 
D
It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence.

GPT 3.5 · Answer

(Choice A) It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.
The underlined sentence provides information about the multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities, which helps support the significance of the discovery of Asian food products being imported to the United States in the 1800s.