The author is associate research fellow of the Institute of Asia-Pacific under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Regionalization of the world economy began to assert itself in the 1950s in the wake of World War II. The Cold War having just begunat the time, the world market, swayed by different ideologies, was divided into two camps. In the East the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) with the former Soviet Union as its nucleus was organized and in the West there appeared the European Community (EC) and the European Free Trade Association (EETA). The COMECON was the offshoot of an idelogy, while the EC and EFTA were born out of mainly economic concerns. Over 10 West European countries, with fairly developed productive forces butall limited by confined territories, small populations and narrow domestic markets, began the economic integration process to resolve the contradiction of a developed productive force and a small domestic market. In a word, political and economic considerations combined to divide post--World War II Europe into the West European and East European markets.
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