By the middle of 1987, it had become apparent that the drift towards far-reaching economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China and a number of Asian centrally planned economies would have far-reaching implications for the world economy. As new institutional arrangements evolve in those economies, the changes inevitably affect their entire external trade and payment relations. In the initial phase the reform process as well as its external policy aspects evoked considerable scepticism among participants in the global economy. It was against this backdrop that the Department of International Economic and Social Affairs convened an international symposium on the external impact of the economic reforms in the aforementioned countries. Its principal purpose was twofold to evaluate the external aspects of the ongoing reforms and their implications for the participation of these economies in the global economic framework. On the other hand, the symposium was to identify areas in which the more imtimate integration of these countries into the global economic framework could be facilitated and to separate those fields from others that would need more research, d
