The US policy of scientific containment will prove as futile and economically harmful as its efforts to constrain Beijing's military modernization drive, according to Oliver Bräuner, a researcher in the China and Global Security Programme of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in a blog on the website of The Diplomat magazine on July 26, 2011.

According to Brauner, China is catching up quickly in terms of technological innovation and indeed is on the verge of becoming a global leader, which has sparked increasing concern over the future of Western leadership in science and technology.

While the US is trying to limit scientific cooperation with China over security concerns, Europeans have turned science and technology cooperation with China into one of the pillars of the so-called strategic partnership, said Brauner. In addition to economic considerations, most Europeans believe that "by engaging China on a broad range of issues, they can help to further open up China and steer its social and economic development in a direction that's desirable for both sides".

This policy has been quite successful, said Brauner. "Economically, EU companies have reaped great financial benefits. EU-China science and technology cooperation is another success story, and indeed is one of the few areas where the strategic partnership offers some real substance."

For Beijing, the EU has become its largest source of technology imports. Actually, China is striving hard to lessen its technological dependence on foreigners by strengthening its indigenous innovation capacities, said Brauner, but for the time being, transfers of foreign technology remain essential to China's economic modernization efforts. "According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the EU accounted for 30 percent of China's overall technology imports in 2009."

China's relentless efforts to become a global leader in innovation seem to be paying off, Brauner opined. China's output of research publications has grown more than four-fold between 1998 and 2008 and ranks second only to the United States by annual output. Reuters expects that Chinese patent filings will overtake Japan and the United States this year (having surpassed Europe in 2005), making China the global innovation 'leader'.

In an era of technological innovation, Brauner concluded both the EU and the United States should meet this challenge by "improving their own innovative capabilities, instead of following a policy of scientific containment".