The article consists of two parts. In the first one, using a number of arguments and facts, it is emphasized that although modeling, as an important area of economic research, is developing very intensively, forecasting the world economy is at best still more an art than a science, since in the modern Economy, which is based more on equilibrium rather than non-equilibrium systems, crises and crises are poorly identified. bifurcations. Nevertheless, the author in his medium-term forecast, based on a model that uses a number of stable-inertial characteristics, made an attempt to forecast the growth of the economies of the East, West and Russia for the next decade. The second part of the article provides a critical analysis of an interesting and at the same time provocative book by two Russian Orientalists, which for the first time in the Russian scientific literature on eight major modern civilizations provides scenario options for the development of the world community for the entire XXI century; a number of demographic and resource characteristics are predicted on the basis of model developments; the experience of effective reforms as a means of ensuring accelerated modernization is analyzed. Keywords: modeling, forecasting, bifurcation, disequilibrium, medium-term forecast, East, West, Russia, scenario variants, model developments, accelerated modernization. The monograph published in 2012 by two well-known Russian Orientalists, A.V. Akimov and A. I. Yakovlev, is a rather original and bold experience of a comprehensive interdisciplinary comparative predictive study of the development of the main eight modern civilizations of the world during the XXI century. In many respects, the study complements the recent forecast developments of Russian scientists [Strategic Global..., 2011; Sadovnichy, Akaev, Korotaev, Malkov, 2012]. Predicting the future is a rather ungrateful thing, and even more so for the distant future, since it is not easy to make the reader believe that ... Read more