title: Spatial Dynamics of the Communities and the Role of Major Countries in the International Rare Earths Trade: A Complex Network Analysis.
abstract: Rare earths (RE) are critical materials in many high-technology products. Due to the uneven distribution and important functions for industrial development, most countries import RE from a handful of suppliers that are rich in RE, such as China. However, because of the rapid growth of RE exploitation and pollution of the mining and production process, some of the main suppliers have gradually tended to reduce the RE production and exports. Especially in the last decade, international RE trade has been changing in the trade community and trade volume. Based on complex network theory, we built an unweighted and weighted network to explore the evolution of the communities and identify the role of the major countries in the RE trade. The results show that an international RE trade network was dispersed and unstable because of the existence of five to nine trade communities in the unweighted network and four to eight trade communities in the weighted network in the past 13 years. Moreover, trade groups formed due to the great influence of geopolitical relations. China was often associated with the South America and African countries in the same trade group. In addition, Japan, China, the United States, and Germany had the largest impacts on international RE trade from 2002 to 2014. Last, some policy suggestions were highlighted according to the results.
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
authors.forename: Xibo
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Humanities and Economic Management, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing, 100083, China.|Key Laboratory of Carrying Capacity Assessment for Resource and Environment, Ministry of Land and Resources, Beijing, 100083, China.
authors.forename: Jianping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ge
authors.affiliation: College of Government, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
authors.forename: Wendong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: School of Economics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
authors.forename: Hanshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Structural Geology Group, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing, 100083, China.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Beijing Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment Engineering, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing, 100083, China.
authors.forename: Ge
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhu
mesh_terms: D038622:Internationality; D008674:Metals, Rare Earth / Q000191:economics*; D008906:Mining / Q000191:economics; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D062206:Spatial Analysis
chemical_list: D008674:Metals, Rare Earth