The situation is not that dire just yet, but signs are beginning to emerge that Silicon Valley is not immune to the difficulties affecting the U.S. economy. And whereas Valley VC’s once tended to primarily act locally, they’re now eyeing global markets. “During the first three months of the year, only five companies backed by venture capital investors went public on Wall Street, the National Venture Capital Association said last week. That is down from 31 in the fourth quarter of last year, and is roughly the same level as at the nadir of the dot-com bust,” The New York Times reports in Economy has become a drag on Silicon Valley. The Times story continues that, “there was also a sharp falloff in the acquisition of start-up companies by bigger corporations. Microsoft is making noise with its effort to take over Yahoo, but elsewhere things are quieting down. There were only 56 acquisitions in the first three months of the year, down from 83 in the fourth quarter.” Indeed, Silicon Valley won’t always be the center of the technology universe, at least according to Rebecca Fannin, author of Silicon Dragon: How China is Winning the Tech Race. Fannin, in this Q&A with Forbes, explains that, “it’s going to be years before it becomes very pronounced, but China is slowly emerging as the next Silicon Valley. If you look at venture capital money flowing in, it’s a phenomenal rate.”Fannin’s work, by the by, is part of a cadre of new books examining China as an emerging commerce powerhouse, eight of which The Guardian reviewed in Here be dragons. Technology Industry