Research On Trade Risk Propagation And Countermeasures Of Global Cobalt Industry Chain Based On Multi-Layer Network

The world economy is undergoing major adjustment.The geopolitical relations among countries are complex and changeable,the external environment is increasingly complex,and the global strategic critical minerals are faced with problems such as the restructuring of industrial structure and spatial layout.Cobalt as a raw material for the production of new energy vehicle batteries,the contradiction between supply and demand has become increasingly prominent.Due to uneven distribution of production and sales of cobalt products at all levels in the global industrial chain and production correlation among products in the industrial chain,the international trade of upstream and downstream products of a certain country is bound to be affected when trade risks of a certain product occur.Therefore,from the perspective of industrial chain,it is of great practical significance to systematically investigate the communication mechanism of trade risks of strategic critical mineral cobalt industry chain,and at the same time adjust China’s trade strategy from the quantitative level to reduce the losses caused by trade risks,which is of great practical significance to strengthen China’s ability to cope with trade risks and ensure the supply security of strategic critical mineral cobalt to support the development of clean energy industry.Therefore,this thesis firstly constructs a multi-layer trade network of cobalt industry chain from the perspective of horizontal spatial trade and vertical whole industry chain,analyses the evolution law of product trade pattern of different links of cobalt industry chain and compared the differences of product trade structure of different links.Secondly,based on the classification ideas of point communication and edge communication,a multi-layer network risk communication model of cobalt industrial chain based on export restrictions of a single country and bilateral frictions are constructed to explore the communication mechanism of multi-layer network trade risks of cobalt industrial chain,analyze the scope of influence under the impact of different trade risks,and identify the key transmission sources and the transmission paths of key transmission sources.Finally,using the principle of maximum entropy,based on the changes in diplomatic relations of key countries,with the goal of minimizing risk losses,a trade redistribution model is constructed,and countermeasures are proposed for the risk management of China’s cobalt industrial chain.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)From the evolution analysis of multi-layer trade network,it is found that China,the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC),Finland and other countries in the cobalt industry chain trade by constantly expanding the number of their trade partners,while seeking more influential trade partners,constantly improve their indirect influence in the cobalt industry chain trade.In addition,the ranking of risk accumulation of trading countries in the cobalt industrial chain changed greatly,among which,China gradually increased its risk accumulation in the cobalt industrial chain from 2017 to 2020,ranking the second in 2019-2020.(2)The trade risk communication in the multi-layer network of the global cobalt industrial chain belongs to "minority communication",which is characterized by "robust and fragile".From the perspective of the transmission of export restrictions in a single country,although there are differences in the ranking order of key countries,the top ten key countries are almost the same,while from the results of bilateral friction transmission,there are great differences in the ranking order of key trade links.In addition,this thesis also finds that the risk communication channels of export restriction communication in a single country are mainly through direct communication,indirect communication and regional communication,while the risk communication channels based on bilateral friction communication are mainly through direct communication and core communication.The global cobalt trade network is more resistant to trade risks spread by bilateral frictions than those spread by export restrictions in individual countries.(3)For China,in the scenario simulation with fixed threshold,the inflection point of adjustment of China’s foreign trade of cobalt resources is 0.15,that is,the reduction ratio of China’s cobalt resources trade is greater than 0.15,which will have an impact on most countries involved in cobalt industrial chain trade.In addition,through the scenario simulation of the trade risks in the multilayer network of the global cobalt industrial chain,the impact of the DRC and the Netherlands on China’s cobalt midstream and downstream trade is as high as 96% when they are the key transmission sources respectively.Therefore,China should pay more attention to the changes in cobalt trade policies of the DRC and the Netherlands.(4)The results show that in the trade relations between DRC and China,DRC should strengthen trade relations with the United Arab Emirates and other countries;China should strengthen trade relations with Slovakia,South Africa,the United Kingdom and other countries.In China-Australia relations,China should strengthen trade relations with the United States,Spain,Norway,France,Germany,Italy and other countries;Australia should strengthen trade relations with Belgium,the United Kingdom,Germany,the Netherlands,the United Kingdom and other countries.In Sino-US relations,China should strengthen trade relations with Namibia,Canada,the United Kingdom,France,Germany,the United Arab Emirates,Spain,the Netherlands,South Africa and other countries;the United States should strengthen its trade relations with Singapore,Turkey,the Netherlands,the Czech Republic,Belgium,Canada and other countries trade relations.The main research contributions of this thesis are as follows:(1)From the perspective of industrial chain,based on the coupling relationship between products,the cobalt multi-layer trade network is constructed,and the evolution of the cobalt multi-layer network trade pattern is comprehensively and systematically analyzed,which is helpful to more systematically analyze the dynamic communication mechanism of trade risks in the industrial chain.(2)Trading countries have different communication modes,characteristics and application scenarios of trade risks caused by different trade strategies.Therefore,the idea of classification research is adopted,and the multi-layer network trade risk communication model of the global cobalt industry chain is constructed,aiming at the two communication modes of export restriction communication and bilateral friction communication of a single country,and the two communication modes are studied more systematically.(3)Breaking through the previous qualitative research methods,the maximum entropy model and complex network model are combined to quantitatively design the strategic critical mineral cobalt trade risk control strategy,which enriches the national strategic critical mineral resource security research theory.