Structure and patterns of the international rare earths trade: A complex network analysis

The international rare earths trade pattern has become increasingly complex during the past few years. It attracted wide attention and affected rare earths resources strategies of many countries. This study constructs an international rare earths trade network based on complex network theory to analyze the distribution of trading countries, the overall structure of trade, and the major countries and communities of the network. The results indicate that the international rare earths network displays a scale-free characteristic from 1996 to 2015, which implies that a few trade relationships always exist and that countries play critical roles in the international rare earths trade. The distribution of the kernel density is significantly right-skewed, which indicates that most countries have approximately three trade partners, while only a few countries have a large number of trade partners. Moreover, the world's rare earths trade shows a tendency towards integration. The number of communities in the network has varied from eight to four during the past twenty years.