China is the new Germany. At the end of the Second World War, Germany was an “emerging market.” It was industrializing rapidly and producing brisk economic growth.

The relationship between BP and the shareholders in its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, Russia’s third largest oil firm, has very publicly fallen apart, reports Britain’s The Guardian newspaper:

Yesterday BP and the Russian shareholders were forced to acknowledge differences over strategy, with the Russian billionaires who own 50% of the company arguing that TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil producer, should be able to expand abroad even if that meant its coming into direct competition with BP itself.

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By most technological measures, the U.S. is still way out in front. But in some key areas, like broadband technology and high-speed Internet access, much of the world has left America behind.