Without port forwarding you can only connect to those who do have it set up.
I don't think this is true.
I've made torrents and then seeded them to my friends without either of us setting up port forwarding. All I did was give them the torrent file and then it worked.
Maybe there's something going on under the hood that makes my situation unique. My experience though is that I didn't have to do anything related to port forwarding when sharing a torrent.
However, port forwarding is required for something like Soulseek. I'm not sure why it would be required for one and not the other.
You know, maybe Western nations are more prosperous because they don't waste as many resources on dumb shit like this.