The Unevenness of the Socio-economic Development and Prospects for the Economic Self-sufficiency of the Countries of the East

When analysing and evaluating the prospects for the attainment of economic self-sufficiency by the countries of the East, it is very important to take into account considerable differences in the levels of socio-economic development between separate countries or groups of countries. Due to the unevenness of economic development caused by differences in social, historical, political, geographical, ethnic and other conditions, the gap between developing and highly developed capitalist countries will be eliminated in different ways and in considerably different periods of time. Since the overwhelming majority of developing countries function to a large extent within the framework of capitalist world economic ties, the unevenness of their development will get more accentuated and deeper. Some countries and some industries and enterprises in these countries may forge ahead, while others will be standing still or even lag behind. In this connection I would like to touch on the questions of methods of summary evaluation and of the methodology of forecasting on that basis the prospects of social and economic development of the countries of the East.