Geoscience Frontiers xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoscience Frontiers
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gsf

Research Paper

Evolution of the rare earth trade network: A perspective of dependency

and competition
Jilan Xu a, Jiahao Li b, Vincent Charles c, Xin Zhao d,⇑
a
School of Urban and Regional Science, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
b
School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China
c
School of Management, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, United Kingdom
d
School of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu 233030, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As a global strategic reserve resource, rare earth has been widely used in important industries, such as
Received 20 February 2023 military equipment and biomedicine. However, existing analyses based solely on the total volume of rare
Revised 14 May 2023 earth trade fail to uncover the underlying competition and dependency dynamics. To address this gap,
Accepted 17 June 2023
this paper employs the principles of trade preference and import similarity to construct dependency
Available online xxxx
and competition networks. Complex network analysis is then employed to study the evolution of the glo-
bal rare earth trade network from 2002 to 2018. The main conclusions are as follows. The global rare
Keywords:
earth trade follows the Pareto principle, and the trade network shows a scale-free distribution. China
Rare earth
Trade network
has emerged as the world’s largest importer and exporter of rare earth since 2017. In the dependency net-
Dependency work, China has become the most dependent country since 2006. The result of community division shows
Competition that China has separated from the American community and formed new communities with the
Complex network analysis 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 distribu-
tion of competition intensity follows a scale-free distribution. Most countries face low-intensity compe-
tition, but there are numerous competing countries. The competition related to China has increased
significantly. Lastly, the competition source for the United States of America has shifted from Mexico
to China, resulting in China, the USA, and Japan becoming the core participants in the competition
network.
Ó 2023 China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University. Published by Elsevier B.V. on
behalf of China University of Geosciences (Beijing). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction The accelerated global shift to renewable energy sources has

From the element composition, rare earth elements are a
unique series of 15 chemical elements, and mainly include the lan-
thanide series elements plus Sc and Y (Zhao et al., 2021; Liu et al.,
2023). Due to unique magnetic and catalytic properties, rare earth
elements have become irreplaceable in the development of science
and technology (Balaram, 2019; Li et al., 2022; Yu et al., 2022). As
an important strategic resource (Yu et al., 2021), rare earth is
widely used in military, medical, energy, and other industrial
fields, especially in high-technology products (McLellan et al.,
2013; Zuo et al., 2021a). Due to geopolitical control over rare earth
supply, a stable supply of rare earth is of great significance to a
country’s economic and social development (Smith et al., 2016).
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zhaoshin_1993@163.com (X. Zhao).
increased the demand for rare earth (Zuo et al., 2021b). However,
the reserves and primary production of rare earth are extremely
unevenly distributed globally. To reduce supply risks, countries
strive to find new rare earth resources and build more trade rela-
tionships with other countries (Zhang et al., 2022). For example,
the USA, Germany, and other European and American countries
are developing trade cooperation with emerging countries with
rare earth to reduce their dependence on China and other rare
earth suppliers. In addition, they are strengthening the exploitation
of their rare earth resources. For instance, they are developing
technologies related to rare earth production.
The global supply pattern of rare earth resources is gradually
being disrupted. China has long been the largest storage, output,
and export country of rare earth in the world. However, China
has long lacked the pricing power of rare earth due to the unrea-
sonable industrial structure, backward processing technology,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2023.101653
1674-9871/Ó 2023 China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Geosciences (Beijing).
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al., Evolution of the rare earth trade network: A perspective of dependency and competition, Geoscience
Frontiers, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2023.101653
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al.
and serious smuggling of rare earth. China tried to change the sta-
tus quo by conducting mergers and reorganization to increase
industry concentration and adopting strict export control policies
on rare earth, but it failed to become a true trading power (Leng
et al., 2021). In recent years, the trade friction between China
and the USA and the COVID-19 pandemic have greatly impacted
the global supply chain. China is also trying to cope with the risk
of global industry chain disruption by vigorously developing
high-tech industries, which may change the trade structure of rare
earth trade in China to some extent. Data show that China has
become the global largest importer and exporter of rare earth since
2017 and gradually changed from a supplier to a consumer in
terms of the trade structure of rare earth, which importantly influ-
ences the global supply of rare earth. In other words, the increase
in the rare earth consumption of China affects its import and
export structure, and this structural adjustment affects the global
trade pattern of rare earth through trade networks. In this paper,
against this changing background, we attempt to reveal the com-
petition and dependence behind rare earth trade.
Early studies on rare earth trade have focused on supply and
demand (Yan and Li, 2020; Deng et al., 2021; Ilankoon, et al.,
2022), policy adjustment (Morrison and Tang, 2012; Tukker,
2014; Volker, 2021), environmental pollution (Viana et al., 2022;
Golroudbaryet al., 2022; Talan and Huang, 2022), recycling and
sustainable development (Schulze and Buchert, 2016; Bailey
et al., 2016; Henriques and Böhm, 2022). Through the application
of complex network analysis, some scholars realized that bilateral
trade between two countries does not exist in isolation. Instead, it
gives rise to a close and complex trade network relationship
between the two countries and other trading partners (Wang
et al., 2020b). The trade relationship, trade volume, and trade value
are the most commonly used indicators to reveal the quantitative
relationship and the derivative competitive and cooperative rela-
tionships between nodes (Zuo et al., 2022). In terms of the interna-
tional trade of mineral resources, the trade of iron (Hao and An,
2022), copper (Li et al., 2023), aluminum (Liu et al., 2021), and nat-
ural graphite (Wang et al., 2021), has received the most attention.
A few studies have focused on the spatial dynamics, trade patterns,
role characteristics, and community structure of rare earth (Wang
et al., 2016; Ge et al., 2016; Hou et al., 2018). Current analyses of
international rare earth trade primarily focus on the material flows
of single products and the structures of major countries. However,
these studies often overlook the aspects of dependence and com-
petition that underpin rare earth trade.
The contributions of this paper are as follows. First, in terms of
research objects, existing studies on rare earth trade have primar-
ily concentrated on major trading countries, such as China, the
USA, and Japan. However, research on the global rare earth trade
network is relatively limited, with a lack of long-term investiga-
tions. In this paper, we adopt a complex network analysis approach
(as descriptive and diagnostic analytics, see Charles et al., 2022) to
study all countries participating in rare earth trade from 2002 to
2018, exploring the global rare earth trade patterns and trends
after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Secondly, in terms of research content, existing research has pre-
dominantly examined the centrality of each country in the rare
earth trade network and the evolution of communities and mod-
ules within the global rare earth trade network. However, there
has been insufficient discussion on the relationships of competi-
tion and dependence underlying trade volumes. Investigating
these relationships not only helps prevent the omission of trade
links with significant roles despite small volumes but also
enhances our understanding of the characteristics of the rare earth
trade market (Hao et al., 2018).
In this paper, based on the principles of trade preference and
import similarity, we construct dependency and competition net-
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works among rare earth trading countries and measure the degree
of interdependence and competition among countries to provide a
reference for countries around the world to make decisions. Com-
pared with the existing studies on trade network construction
based on the volume of trade, the dependency index and import
competition index constructed in this paper take into account
trade links and trade intensity between countries, thus reducing
the calculation bias caused by the gap in the scale of trade between
countries, so as to accurately quantify the characteristics of trade
between countries.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the data
sources and methodology. In Section 3, we construct the global
rare earth trade network and use related methods to conduct
empirical analysis. Section 4 provides the conclusion.
2. Data sources and methodology
2.1. Rare earth trade data
In international trade, there are many types of rare earth prod-
ucts involved, but only a few types of rare earth products are
widely used and studied. Among them, rare earth ores, rare earth
metals, and compounds have received the most attention. The HS
six-digit codes involved in these rare earth products include rare
earth ores (HS253090), rare earth metals (HS280530, HS284610,
HS284690) and their compounds (HS850511), which cover the
entire rare earth industry chain from raw materials to intermediate
products and final products. The trade data of rare earth resources
were obtained from the United Nations Comtrade database
(see https://comtrade.un.org/). In this paper, rare earth exports
are uniformly used to measure the trade volumes between two
countries to exclude the influence of double counting and factors,
such as freight and tariffs. In addition, to maintain the integrity
of the research data, missing export data are supplemented in
two ways. If the data on exports from a certain country to other
countries are missing, but the import data of the other countries
exist, the statistics of the other countries can be directly used. If
the import and export data of individual countries are missing
due to political or code changes, supplementary methods can be
adopted (In 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was re-
formed, changing the country’s name to Serbia and Montenegro.
In 2006, Serbia declared its independence and became the legal
successor of the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro. Therefore,
the data of Serbia from 2000 to 2005 were replaced by the export
data of Yugoslavia).
2.2. Trade network model
Rare earth trade network. In the study of a global trade net-
work, countries are represented as nodes in the network, trade links
between countries are considered as the edges of network connec-
tions, and trade volumes between countries are assigned as the
weights of the edges. Since not all countries participate in rare earth
trade and not all countries maintain continuous trade throughout
the research period, this article includes all countries that have
engaged in rare earth trade between 2002 and 2018, resulting in
a total of 185 samples of rare earth trade countries within the rare
earth trade network. These 185 countries or regions are regarded as
network nodes, and the rare earth imports are used as the weights
of the edges in the trade network to construct a directed weighted
trade network GTrade . It can be expressed as Eq. (1):
GTrade ¼ ðV; E; wÞ ð1Þ
In the model, V ¼ fv 1 ; v 2 ; A
^ A ^ v n g represents the node set,
^  A;
vi ^ ^ ^
2 Vði ¼ 1; 2; A  A  A; 185Þ represents a country or region in the
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al. Geoscience Frontiers xxx (xxxx) xxx

trade network, E ¼ fe1 ; e2 ; A ^ A

^  A;
^ em g 2 V  V is the edge in direct import competition with each other. Drawing on the
set, ðv i ; v j Þ 2 E indicates that country i imports from country j, research by Hao et al. (2018), we construct a weighted competition
and wðv i ; v j Þ means the trade volume of the rare earth imported network based on the principle of import similarity. Higher import
by country i from country j. similarity between the two countries indicates greater competition
Dependency index. The dependency index measures whether a intensity. The equation for calculating competition intensity is as
rare-earth trading country has a trade preference for an individual follows (Eq. (7)):
country and is calculated using the point Mutual Information Index ( " #)
(PMI), which measures the correlation of two events by calculating X yic þ yjc ðyic =yi Þ  ðyjc =yj Þ
CIdirect ði; jÞ ¼ Þ 1  100
their co-occurrence probability. Drawing on the research by c
yw ðyic =yi Þ þ ðyjc =yj Þ
Kharrazi (2015), pointwise mutual information (PMI) is introduced
ð7Þ
to compare the probability of actual and random trade links
between two countries. The probability of country i importing from
In Eq. (7), CIdirect ði; jÞ indicates the intensity of direct competition
country j is defined as P ij , P i represents the probability that country
between country i and country j, yic and yjc represent the trade vol-
i imports rare earth, Pj indicates the probability that country j
exports rare earth, and kðk > 0Þ is the coefficient. The probability umes imported by country i and country j from country c, respec-
that two countries actually trade with each other is defined as tively, yw represents the annual global total imports, and yi and yj
Eq. (2): represent the total imports of country i and country j in each year,
respectively. A larger value of CIdirect ði; jÞ means more intense direct
H ¼ k  logðPij Þ ð2Þ competition between country i and country j.
If the two events are independent of each other, can be P ij Based on the competition intensity indicator, a rare earth trade
competition network can be constructed as Eq. (8):
expressed as P i  Pj , then the probability of random trade can be
defined as Eq. (3):
GDC ¼ ðV; EDC ; CIdirect Þ9k 2 V; ðV i ; V k Þ 2 EDD and ðV j ; V k Þ 2 EDD ð8Þ
H ¼ k  logðPi  Pj Þ ð3Þ
The above equations represent the actual probability and In the model, V ¼ fv 1 ; v 2 ; A
^ A ^ v n g represents the node set,
^  A;

expected probability that two countries trade with each other, and v i 2 Vði ¼ 1; 2; A
^ A
^  A;
^ nÞ represents a country or region in
respectively. The difference between the two values is defined as ^ A
the trade network. EDC ¼ feDC1 ; eDC2 ; A ^  A;
^ eDCm g 2 V  V repre-
PMI, and the dependence of country i on country j can be expressed sents the edge set, ðv i ; v j Þ 2 EDC means the direct competition
as Eq. (4): between country i and country j, and CIdirect ðv i ; v j Þ represents
the intensity of the direct competition between country i and
H  H ¼ k  logðP ij =ðPi  Pj ÞÞ ð4Þ
country j.
When H  H < 0, the actual probability that two countries
trade with each other is less than the expected probability, indicat- 2.3. Complex network indicators
ing that country i depends on country j. On the contrary, when
H  H > 0, country j depends on country i. Because k < 0, when PageRank centrality. The network centrality index is used to
P ij =ðP i  P j Þ > 1, country i depends on country j. Conversely, coun- measure the status of a certain point or person in the entire net-
try i does not depend on country j. work, usually represented by centrality. Common network central-
y P y P x
In the specific calculation, we let P ij ¼ y ij , Pi ¼ j y ij , Pj ¼ i xwji . ity indicators include degree centrality, betweenness centrality,
w w

yij is the total trade volume imported by country i from country j, closeness centrality, and eigenvector centrality. The PageRank cen-
trality used in this article has three obvious advantages compared
xji is the total trade volume imported by country j from country i,
to the above-mentioned centrality indicators. First, the PageRank
and yw and xw represent the global total imports and exports,
algorithm not only considers the degree of nodes but also considers
respectively. Because yw ¼ xw , Eq. (4) can be rewritten as Eq. (5):
the degree of neighboring nodes. Second, the PageRank algorithm
 
yij can handle directed and undirected graphs. Third, the PageRank
yw yij  yw
Pij =ðPi  Pj Þ ¼    ¼ ð5Þ algorithm can handle weighted graphs. In this algorithm, the orig-
yi

xj y i  xj inal importance score is assigned to each node in the network, then
yw xw
the properties of the neighbors of each node are considered, and
yij yw
Based on Eq. (5), we let DD ¼ yi xj
. The degrees of dependence the importance of each node is updated by iterative recursion until
between nodes in the trade network are measured, and the edges the score is stable. The equation for calculating PageRank centrality
with a degree of dependence greater than 1 are retained to con- is as follows (Eq. (9)):
struct a rare earth trade dependency network (Eq. (6)):  
X
N
Cp v j 1X N
GDD ¼ ðV; EDD ; DDÞ8DDðV i ; V j Þ  1 ð6Þ C p ðv i Þ ¼ a Aj;i   þ ð1  aÞ C p ðv i Þ ¼ 1 ð9Þ
j¼1
dout v j N i¼1
In the model, V ¼ fv 1 ; v 2 ; A^ A ^ v n g represents the node set,
^  A;
and v i 2 Vði ¼ 1; 2; A  A  A; nÞ represents a country or region in
^ ^ ^ In Eq. (9), C p ðv i Þ represents the PageRank centrality of country
 
the trade network. EDD ¼ feDD1 ; eDD2 ; A ^ A^  A;
^ eDDm g 2 V  V repre- v i , and dout v j represents the out-degree of country v j . N repre-
sents the edge set, ðv i ; v j Þ 2 EDD means that country v i depends sents the number of node countries in the network. Aj;i represents
on country v j , and DDðv i ; v j Þ indicates the degree to which country a matrix of N  N, and a is the damping coefficient, which is 0.85
i depends on country j. according to experience. A higher score indicates a greater global
Competition index. The competition index evaluates the influence.
import similarity degree of a country according to its trade connec- Clustering coefficient. The clustering coefficient C C of country
tion and trade intensity with all other countries in the trade net- v i is the ratio of the number of actual trade relationships between
work. When two countries simultaneously have import trade its neighboring economies to all possible trade relationships. It is
relationships with another country, they can be considered to be defined as Eq. (10):
3
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al.
1X N
2ni
C C ðv i Þ ¼ ð10Þ
N i¼1 ki ðki  1Þ
In Eq. (10), ki represents the number of countries having trade
relationships with country i, and ni represents the number of trade
relationships between the k trading partners of country i.N has the
same meaning as above.
Average shortest path. The average shortest path L represents
the average number of the edges in the shortest path between all
pairs of nodes in the network, reflecting the average degree of sep-
aration among countries participating in rare earth trade. It is
defined as Eq. (11):
2 XN XN
L¼ d ð11Þ
NðN  1Þ i¼1 j¼iþ1 ij
In Eq. (11), dij represents the number of edges traversed by the
shortest path between country i and country j.N has the same
meaning as above.
Community. A community is formed by some countries in the
lithium carbonate rare earth trade network. The relationships
between countries in the same community are usually stronger
than those between countries in different communities. Modular-
ity is an indicator to measure the density of links inside communi-
ties relative to links between communities. The value of the
modularity coefficient lies in the range of [1, 1]. A value of the
modularity coefficient closer to 1 indicates better quality of the
partitions. The modularity coefficient is defined as Eq. (12):
 
1 X ki kj
Q¼ Aij  @ ci ;cj ð12Þ
2m i;j 2m
In Eq. (12), 2m represents the total number of edges in the net-
work, Aij represents whether the country i and country j trade with
each other. If country i trades with country j, Aij ¼ 1. Other-
kk
wise, Aij ¼ 0. 2m
i j
represents the expectation of trade between coun-
try i and country j in the random trade network. If country i and
country j belong to the same module, @ ci ;cj ¼ 1. Otherwise 0.
3. Results and analysis
3.1. Evolution of the trade network
The trade volumes of rare earth in China and the world from
2002 to 2018 are shown in Fig. 1. As depicted in Fig. 1, the trade
volume of rare earth in the world rose rapidly from $2 billion to
$7.5 billion and exhibited a rising trend of expansion-shrinking-
expansion fluctuations. The number of countries participating in
rare earth trade reached a trough in 2003, peaked in 2011, and then
Fig. 1. Evolution trend of global rare earth trade scale from 2002 to 2018.
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gradually declined. The scale of rare earth trade experienced a per-
iod of rapid expansion from 2002 to 2011. Affected by the global
financial crisis in 2008, the scale of the global rare earth trade
shrank significantly in 2009. However, it quickly returned to pre-
crisis levels by 2010 and peaked at over $10 billion in 2011. From
2012 to 2016, the scale of global rare earth trade sharply declined
from $10 billion to $5 billion, possibly due to the strict export
restriction policies adopted by China in 2011. In 2014, the WTO
ruled against China in the rare earth case, mandating full liberaliza-
tion of rare earth controls. However, the scale of rare earth trade
did not immediately expand but began to recover after 2016. In
addition, China became the largest importer and exporter of rare
earth in 2017, significantly impacting the global pattern of rare
earth trade.
We ranked the trade volumes of rare earth between countries
from smallest to largest and calculated the cumulative distribution
proportion. As displayed in Fig. 2, the global trade volume of rare
earth follows the Pareto principle, where 20% of trade links account
for more than 80% of the total trade volume, and the trade network
presents a scale-free distribution. Global rare earth resources are
unevenly distributed, with mining difficulty and high environmen-
tal costs, leading to a monopolistic supply of rare earth mining. In
addition, a few countries possess advanced technologies and main-
tain a technological monopoly in rare earth processing, ultimately
causing an imbalance in rare earth trade.
To further reveal the distribution characteristics of rare earth
trade, we calculated the average clustering coefficients of regular
and random networks. As shown in Fig. 3, the average clustering
coefficient of the regular network stays stable between 0.6 and
0.7, while that of the random network is about 0.1. The average
clustering coefficient of the regular network is much higher than
that of the random network, indicating a high concentration degree
of the rare earth trade network. According to the change in the
average shortest path, the values of the random and regular net-
works decrease, and the value of the regular network is always
smaller than that of the random network. These observations
demonstrate the ‘‘small world” attribute of the global rare earth
trade network. Any trade policy adjustments by major rare earth
trading countries such as China, the USA, and Japan can lead to
substantial changes in the global rare earth trade network.
The rare earth trade networks in 2002 and 2018 are visualized
in Fig. 4. In the rare earth trade network, the thickness of the edge
represents the number of rare earth imports, and the size of the
node represents the trade volume of the corresponding country.
The part inside the ring includes the top 10 countries in terms of
exports, and the part outside the ring includes the countries ranked
clockwise by export volume from largest to smallest. This visual-
ization further reveals the uneven distribution of global rare earth
Fig. 2. Cumulative distribution of rare earth trade links from 2002 to 2018.
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al.
Fig. 3. Average clustering coefficient and shortest path of rare earth trade network.
trade and prompts reflection on the relationships between coun-
tries in the trade network.
3.2. Characteristics of the dependency network
This article uses the software Gephy to partition the community
structure of the dependency network. The specific partitioning pro-
cess is implemented using the Modularity algorithm. The funda-
mental concept of this algorithm is to divide the network into
several communities, maximizing the connection density within
each community while minimizing the connection density
between communities. The community structures of the depen-
dency network in 2002 and 2018 are shown in Fig. 5. In 2002, 11
communities were in the dependency network of the global rare
earth trade. In Fig. 5, the largest community, including most coun-
tries, is depicted in orange. This community consists of Asian, Euro-
pean, and African countries, with the most countries from Asia,
such as Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. The
following community is depicted in green and includes American
countries, such as the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Panama. The major
exporter of rare earth, China, is also in this community. The third
largest community is depicted in purple and mainly comprises
European and African countries, such as the United Kingdom, Bel-
gium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Saudi Arabia, the oil giant, is
also part of this community. With the exception of the communi-
Fig. 4. Evolution of rare earth trade network in 2002 and 2018.
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ties in Canada and Germany, all the remaining communities have
fewer than 10 members.
The community structures of the dependency network of rare
earth trade changed considerably from 2002 to 2018. In 2018,
there were nine communities, fewer than in 2002. The largest com-
munity, depicted in orange, consisted of members from various
parts of the world. The majority of countries in this community
were from Europe and Asia, including Germany, France, the United
Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and
India. The USA, the major importer of rare earth, was also part of
this community. The most notable change in this community
was the inclusion of the USA, Germany, and Japan in the same com-
munity. This alignment will facilitate the deep integration of the
Americas, Europe, and Asia in the rare earth trade market. This
integration signifies that more countries are adopting a diversified
rare earth import strategy to reduce their reliance on China. In
addition, this integration will weaken China’s pricing power over
rare earths and alter the global rare earth supply pattern.
The community in which China was placed in 2018 is repre-
sented by the color green. This community is primarily composed
of Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia,
and Laos. This community has two major characteristics. First, the
number of members within the community is rapidly decreasing.
Second, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries from the Amer-
icas have distanced themselves from the original community. In
recent years, the USA has adopted various strategies to reduce its
reliance on China’s rare earths. For example, it has undertaken
domestic rare earth mining projects and pursued collaborations
with other countries to ensure a diverse supply chain for rare
earths. Among them, the United States has cooperated with Canada,
the United Kingdom, and Mongolia to develop rare earths. As a
major global importer of rare earths, the diversification of its supply
chain has already reshaped the global trade pattern for rare earths.
We studied the number of countries that have established
dependent relationships with the top five countries in the total vol-
ume of rare earth trade in 2018. As shown in Fig. 6, the order of the
number of dependency relationships is as follows: China, the USA,
Germany, Japan and Australia, which differs from the order of total
trade volume of rare earth. A higher number of dependencies indi-
cates a greater ability of the network to control the flow and direc-
tion of rare earth trade. By comparison, it can be found that with
China’s accession to the WTO, China has emerged as the country
with the highest number of dependency relationships since 2006.
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al.
Fig. 5. Community structure for dependency network in 2002 and 2018.
Fig. 6. Top trading countries and their dependence.
The number of countries establishing dependent relationships with
China has increased, reflecting their growing dependence on China.
In addition, we note that between 2002 and 2006, the rankings of
China, the USA, and Germany were alternating, with each country
exerting a similar influence on the global rare earth trade. It was
only after 2006 that China began to distance itself from the USA
and Germany. Comparatively, the gap between China and the
USA has shown a pattern of expansion, narrowing, and expansion
again, while the gap between the USA and Germany has shown a
trend of narrowing, expanding, and narrowing again. In 2016, the
number of dependent relationships controlled by the USA and Ger-
many was equal, solidifying their prominent positions in the global
rare earth trade network. Moreover, we observed a significant
decline in the number of countries establishing dependent rela-
tionships with China, the United States, Germany, and Australia
after 2016, while the number of countries establishing dependent
relationships with Japan has experienced a notable upward trend.
We used Python software to calculate the PageRank centrality
of the dependency network and took the results in 2002, 2010,
and 2018 as examples to describe the distribution of the top 10
countries. The findings, presented in Table 1, indicate that from
2002 to 2010, Germany, the USA, France, and the United Kingdom
consistently held prominent positions in terms of PageRank cen-
trality. This observation suggests that the world strongly depended
on rare earth products from European and American countries.
From the perspective of the industry chain of rare earth, European
and American countries have advanced processing technology and
mainly import a large amount of rare earth raw materials to meet
domestic demand. Although China has long been a major supplier
of rare earth in the world, its lower ranking can be attributed to the
6
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fact that its rare earth products mostly remain at the primary and
intermediate levels due to its limited processing technology.
According to Table 1, we can see that in 2018, Germany ranked
first, while the USA slipped from first in 2010 to sixth. China made
its debut in the top 10, securing the second rank. The significant
reason behind this shift is China’s remarkable advancements in
rare earth processing technology. The USA and other major con-
sumers of rare earth have been sending intermediate rare earth
products to China for refining and processing, leading to an
increasing dependence on China among countries worldwide. In
addition, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and India ranked
high in PageRank centrality, indicating that these countries estab-
lished substantial dependent relationships with other countries,
exerting a notable influence on rare earth trade. Unlike the Nether-
lands, Italy, and Spain, Turkey and India joined the top 10 for the
first time in 2018, signifying the evolving nature of the entire
rare-earth trade pattern.
3.3. Characteristics of the competition network
To illustrate the distribution of competition intensity among
different countries, we utilized data from 2002, 2007, 2012, and
2018 to model the intensity of competition for an individual coun-
try based on the number of competing countries. As shown in
Fig. 7, the majority of countries experience low-intensity competi-
tion, yet they face numerous competing countries. Building upon
the earlier analysis of the rare earth trade network, it becomes
evident that the network exhibits a scale-free characteristic. Many
countries have relatively small rare earth imports but rely on a
concentrated group of source countries. Consequently, numerous
countries find themselves involuntarily involved in the competi-
tion for rare earth imports. Countries such as Japan, the USA,
Germany, Mexico, and China, face more intense competition
because of their relatively large imports of rare earth, relatively
diverse sources of imports, and large numbers of competing
countries.
Based on the competitive relationships, we built a simplified
network to capture the most important relationships in the compe-
tition network. If countries A, B, C, and D all import rare earth from
country E, then A, B, C, and D have import competition, and the
intensity of competition depends on their import similarity. We
ranked the competitive relationships between each country and
others according to the competition intensity. The top 1 competi-
tion network only contains the top 1 competitive relationship of
each country. The top 1 rare earth competition networks in 2002
and 2018 are shown in Fig. 8. In the top 1 rare earth competition
network in 2002, the first competition mainly involved Germany,
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al. Geoscience Frontiers xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 1
The PageRank centrality for the top 10 countries in 2002, 2010 and 2018.

PageRank 2002 2010 2018

Country Centrality Country Centrality Country Centrality
1 Germany 0.0349 USA 0.0283 Germany 0.0303
2 France 0.0347 France 0.028 China 0.0297
3 USA 0.0317 Netherlands 0.0273 United Kingdom 0.0258
4 Spain 0.0251 United Kingdom 0.0271 Netherlands 0.0249
5 Italy 0.0241 Germany 0.027 France 0.0232
6 United Kingdom 0.0213 Spain 0.0253 USA 0.0225
7 Finland 0.0209 India 0.0218 Spain 0.0214
8 South Africa 0.0197 Italy 0.0198 Italy 0.0203
9 Denmark 0.0191 Finland 0.0191 Turkey 0.0203
10 Netherlands 0.0191 Austria 0.0184 India 0.0184

Fig. 7. Distribution of competitive intensity in 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2018.

Japan, the USA, Mexico, and France. A total of 28 countries had
import competitive relationships with Germany, mainly because
they all imported rare earth from the United Kingdom and Spain.
Among the competitive relationships with the USA, 17 were caused
by imports from Mexico, and 5 were caused by those from Japan. In
addition, for China, export competition was dominant, while
import competition was less.
Three changes are most obvious in the top 1 competition net-
work of rare earth in 2002 and 2018. First, the competition related
to China significantly increased. Based on the above analysis, China

Fig. 8. Top 1 rare earth competitive network in 2002 and 2018.

7
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al.
has become the largest importer of rare earth since 2017, and the
China’s consumption of rare earths exceeded 180,000 tons in 2020.
With the continuous development of modern industries, China’s
consumption of rare earths needs to expand rapidly, especially in
the manufacturing fields of new energy, new materials, energy
conservation and environmental protection, aerospace, military
industry, and electronic information. In addition, although China
is the world’s largest rare earth producer, it needs to import some
rare earth minerals and chemical concentrates because its rare
earth extraction technology is relatively backward. The increase
in import demand will intensify the competition faced by China.
Second, the USA, Japan, and Germany all compete with each other
for rare earths imported from China. Among them, the source of
competition in the USA has shifted from Mexico to China. The rea-
son for this change may be that the USA has a higher demand for
rare earths, and the diversification strategy of the rare earth supply
chain can only reduce the degree of dependence on China. How-
ever, in the short term, it is still impossible to get rid of dependence
on China. As long as the USA still imports rare earths from China,
this competitive pattern will continue. Third, the competition from
Germany, France, and Mexico has disappeared, and the import
sources of rare earths trade have become more concentrated. More
competitive relationships have emerged in the import trade from
China, the USA, and Japan.
4. Conclusion and discussion
In this paper, based on the data of the global rare earth trade
from 2002 to 2018, we use complex network analysis to study
the evolution characteristics of the global rare earth trade pattern
and construct the dependency and competition networks among
rare earth trading countries based on trade preference and import
similarity. In addition, this study recognizes that sustainability and
sustainable development are critical implications for the minerals
sector (Gupta et al., 2021). Therefore, from a policy perspective,
the study’s focus on complex network analysis and the evolution
of the global rare earth trade network aligns with the goal of fos-
tering innovation and promoting sustainable industrialization in
the context of strategic resources (thus aligning with United
Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly
SDG9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). The main results
are as follows:
(1) From the perspective of global rare earth trade, its scale has
shown a fluctuating upward trend of expansion–contrac
tion-expansion. The trade scale increased from $2 billion to
$7.5 billion. China has become the largest country in both
import and export of rare earth trade in the world since
2017. The global rare earth trade follows the Pareto princi-
ple, where 20% of trade links account for more than 80% of
the total trade volume, and the trade network presents a
scale-free distribution. The global rare earth trade network
has the characteristic of a ‘‘small world”. If key participants
such as China, the USA, Japan, and others were to withdraw
from the market, the structure of the global rare earth trade
network would undergo significant changes.
(2) From the perspective of the dependency network, China has
separated from the American community and formed new
communities with ASEAN countries. Meanwhile, the USA
has formed a super-strong community with European coun-
tries, such as Germany and France, as well as Asian coun-
tries, such as Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea. In terms of
the number of dependent relationships, the countries estab-
lishing the most dependencies are China, the USA, Germany,
8
Geoscience Frontiers xxx (xxxx) xxx
Japan, and Australia. China has held the position of the most
dependent country since 2006. However, when measured by
the PageRank centrality of the dependency network, China
ranks second among the top 10 countries.
(3) From the perspective of the competition network, competi-
tion intensity follows a scale-free distribution. Most coun-
tries face low-intensity competition, but there are
numerous competing countries. The competition related to
China has increased significantly, and the USA, Japan, and
Germany have begun to compete with each other due to
their rare earth imports from China. The source of competi-
tion for the USA has shifted from Mexico to China, resulting
in China, the USA, and Japan becoming the core of the com-
petition network.
In this paper, although the competition and dependency net-
works are built based on the trade volume of rare earth, they are
not able to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire rare
earth trade or fully capture the production and utilization of rare
earth in different industries. Future research can be enhanced
and expanded by considering the following three aspects. First, it
is important to differentiate between different types of rare earth
elements and establish a multi-level trade network that covers var-
ious rare earth elements. This will allow for an exploration of the
changing positions of different countries within the network at dif-
ferent levels. Second, the rare earth trade network can be con-
structed from the perspective of the industry chain. This involves
categorizing rare earth products into raw materials, intermediate
products, and final finished products based on the input–output
table. Such as approach will shed light on the status and dynamics
of different countries within the rare earth industry chain. Third, it
would be valuable to investigate the externalities of trade net-
works, including the impacts of rare earth trade on environmental
pollution and the upgrading of industrial structure. Social and
community externalities, such as displacement of local communi-
ties, social conflicts, human rights abuses, and labor issues, should
also be investigated (Charles, 2015, 2016). This analysis can pro-
vide insights into the broader implications and consequences of
rare earth trade.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Jilan Xu: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing –
review & editing. Jiahao Li: Methodology, Software, Writing –
review & editing. Vincent Charles: Writing – review & editing,
Formal analysis, Investigation. Xin Zhao: Visualization, Writing –
review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Editor and the anonymous
reviewers for their valuable feedback on the previous version of
this manuscript. This work was supported by the Ministry of
Education of the People’s Republic of China Humanities and Social
Sciences Youth Foundation (Grant No. 22YJC910014), the Social
Sciences Planning Youth Project of Anhui Province (Grant No.
AHSKQ2022D138), and the Innovation Development Research
Project of Anhui Province (Grant No. 2021CX053).
J. Xu, J. Li, V. Charles et al. Geoscience Frontiers xxx (xxxx) xxx

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