Evolution of the rare earth trade network: from the perspective of dependency and competition

Abstract

As a global strategic reserve resource, rare earth has been widely used in important industries, such as military equipment and biomedicine. However, through existing analyses based on the total volume of rare earth trade, the competition and dependency behind the trade cannot be revealed. In this paper, based on the principle of trade preference and import similarity, we construct dependency and competition networks and use complex network analysis to study the evolution of the global rare earth trade network from 2002 to 2018. The main conclusions are as follows: the global rare earth trade follows the Pareto principle, and the trade network shows a scale-free distribution. China has become the largest country in both import and export of rare earth trade in the world since 2017. In the dependency network, China has become the most dependent country since 2006. The result of community division shows that China has separated from the American community and formed new communities with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. The United States of America has formed a super-strong community with European and Asian countries. In the competition network, the distribution of competition intensity follows a scale-free distribution. Most countries are faced with low-intensity competition, but competing countries are relatively numerous. The competition related to China has increased significantly. The competition source of the United States of America has shifted from Mexico to China. China, the USA, and Japan have been the cores of the competition network.