ABSTRACT
The lesser significance of electronic, communication, and aircraft categories partly reflects the impact of Western export controls. Much Western discussion of East-West economic relations presumes that the composition of Western exports to communist countries differs markedly from Western exports to other advanced Western countries or to developing countries. More the volume of Industrial West (I.W.) high-technology product exports to Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. has declined. The pattern of I.W. exports to the PRC reflects trends in emerging PRC relations with I.W. countries. While communist imports of I.W. high-technology products expanded vigorously throughout the 1970s, each communist country maintained a relatively constant share of these imports. Estimates of individual Western country shares of high-technology products trade are probably unaffected by the commodity data problems, for one can reasonably assume that the inaccuracies caused by using trade data are relatively equal for all Western countries.
