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About development in tropical countries. The GNP per inhabitant is an economic gauge currently used to evaluate the growth level of a country. On a world scale, the gaps are significant, and every improvment of the situation comes up against several hurdles. In the tropical regions, the increase in the gross national product has been made difficult, less because of overpopulation, and poorness of the soils — which do not represent general cases — than because of the fast population increase, which requires very high investments and reduces their effects, and sometimes even makes them completely uneffective. The lowness of the general technical level, the tightness of the home markets, the competition with the industrialised countries, represent some other brakes upon development of the agricultural and industrial output. During the last 20 years the gap between industrialised and developing countries has become very much deeper than expected. The hopes of the developing countries concerning «the green revolution », the increase in energy and raw material prices in 1973, have been partially deceived ; several reasons of this failure were easy to foresee. So, for most of the developing countries, to catch up the industrialised ones seems something illusory in a foresseable time. Thus is it advisable to aim at more lower objectives, seeking first of all for a reduction of the most scandalous inequalities between the nations, the regions, and the social groups ? However this principle demands important changes in the relations between rich and poor countries, as well as in the mentalities of the heads of the states. But these new principles are more easy to state than to put into practice, and we remain somehow sceptical about the chances of success they have, as far as their quick and generalized implementation is concerned.

The Oil Industry in the Popular Republic of China. At the beginning of the nineteen-eighties, the Popular Republic of China became the seventh largest producer of petroleum in the world. The portion of the North-East and, to a lesser degree that of the North, today greatly eclipses production in the North-West, where the pioneering work had started. For a good decade now, oil production exceeds domestic needs, which are not very high and which are satisfied by a relatively modern refinery industry, about 70 % of the refineries being situated near the large eastern cities. As a

From Standard Fruit to Castle-and-Cooke, origin and development of a multinational banana company. — In the great effort of renewal which has been characteristics of the International Banana Trade since the early 1960's, the Standard Fruit Company holds an outstanding position. In this article, we aim at restating the history of this American multinational company which, undoubtedly, is equally famous and misappreciated among people at large, people too easily dazzled by the overwhelming personality of the United Fruit Company. Integrated since 1968 to the Castle-and-Cooke group, Standard Fruit has been able to take advantage of this situation to make a conspicuous breakthrough into Asia and assert themself, on all the world markets as the main alternative to the preponderance of the United Brands.