In 1962, we usually divided the world into three regions. The advanced capitalist group was then known as the developed world. The second was the “Sino-Soviet bloc”. Countries “in course of development” were the third world. The China-USSR split occurred in the early 1960s; most of the communist regimes collapsed around 1990, and the hostility of the cold war has largely faded away. The income gap between the former communist countries and the advanced capitalist group has become very much wider than it was. For this reason, a tripartite division of the world economy is no longer appropriate.