Strategic mineral resource competition: Strategies of the dominator and nondominator

Abstract In the global situation of increasingly severe resource competition, to study the strategies of the dominator and the nondominator, this paper builds two different levels of networks based on the theory of two-mode complex networks: an overall network and a classification network. Through the analysis of the topological structure of the overall network, the “dominator” of international trade and the minerals with the highest comprehensive importance to the countries involved in global trade are identified, and the dominant mode of the dominator and the classification of the competition mineral are studied by analyzing the classification network. The results show the following: (1) The United States, China, and the EU were the dominators in the international trade of 24 strategic minerals from 2009 to 2018, and their dominant modes differed for different types of minerals. (2) Petroleum and coal are the minerals with the highest comprehensive importance for the countries involved in global trade, and each of the 24 minerals has a different degree of supply risk. (3) Ten minerals, namely, tungsten (Tu), uranium (Ur), phosphorus (Ap), coal (Coal), copper (Cu), zirconium (Zr), aluminum (Al), lithium carbonate (LiC), oil (Oil), and rare earth (RE), are competitive minerals; geographically, the resource competition in western and southern Africa, southern South America, western Asia, Australia and Russia is the most intense. Finally, the study provides suggestions on how countries with different resource endowments can reduce trade risks and maintain a dynamic balance of the “order” of peaceful development among the dominators.