Research on Weighted Directed Dynamic Multiplexing Network of World Grain Trade Based on Improved MLP Framework

As the main food source for humans, the global movement of the three major grains significantly impacts human survival and development. To investigate the evolution of the world cereal trade network and its development trend, a weighted directed dynamic multiplexed network was established using historical data on cereal trade, cereal import dependency ratio, and arable land per capita. Inspired by the MLP framework, we redefined the weight determination method for computing layer weights and edge weights of the target layer, modified the CN, RA, AA, and PA indicators, and proposed the node similarity indicator for weighted directed networks. The AUC metric, which measures the accuracy of the algorithm, has also been improved in order to finally obtain the link prediction results for the grain trading network. The prediction results were processed, such as web-based presentation and community partition. It was found that the number of generalized trade agreements does not have a decisive impact on inter-country cereal trade. The former large grain exporters continue to play an important role in this trade network. In the future, the world trade in cereals will develop in the direction of more frequent intercontinental trade and gradually weaken the intracontinental cereal trade.

Exploring the complex structural evolution of global primary product trade network

The production and trade of primary products had a growing impact on the economic security of all countries and regions,and the strategic position of these products in the global trade network was becoming increasingly prominent.Based on complex network theory,this paper explored the spatial pattern and complex structural evolution of the global primary product trade network(GPPTN)during 1985-2015 by using index methods,such as centrality,Sankey diagram,and structure entropy,focusing on the diversified spatial structure of China’s import and export markets for primary products(with exceptions of Taiwan of China,Hong Kong of China,and Macao of China due to a lack of data)and their geographical implications for China’s energy security.The research offered the following key findings.The GPPTN showed an obvious spatial heterogeneity pattern,and the area of import consumption was more concentrated;however,the overall trend was decentralized.The trade center of gravity shifted eastwards and reflected the rise of emerging markets.The overall flow of the GPPTN was from west to east and from south to north.In terms of the community detection of the GPPTN,North America,Europe,and Asia increasingly presented an unbalanced“tripartite confrontation”.China’s exports of primary products were mainly concentrated in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN)and other peripheral regions of Asia,and its imports undergone a major transformation,gradually expanding from the peripheral regions of Asia to Africa,the Middle East,Latin America,and other parts of the world.Energy fuels also became the largest imported primary products.Based on the changing trend of structural entropy and main market share,the analysis showed that the stable supply of China’s energy diversification was gradually realized.In particular,the cooperation dividend proposed by the Belt and Road initiative became an important turning point and a strong support for the expansion of China’s energy market diversification pattern and guarantee of energy security.

Changes of China's Position in the World Food Trade Network

"Ensuring stability in foreign trade"and"ensuring food security"are essential parts of China's"six priorities"and"stability in six areas".Based on the data of bilateral food trade between countries during 1996-2018,using descriptive statistical analysis and social network analysis methods,this paper analyzed the changes of China's trade position in the world food trade network.It reached the following results.(i)China's position in the trade network has undergone a phased process of"remarkable improvement-continuous fluctuation-significant decline-steady growth".(ii)Export participation is better than import participation,the gap between trade export strength and import strength is widening,and the effective scale and constraint index gradually improve.(iii)The change of China's position in the food trade network is affected by geographical,economic,institutional and cultural factors.In view of these findings,it is recommended to improve node centrality,enhance network participation,improve network interconnection,and prevent international market risks,so as to better deal with the complex international environment.

The Impact of the Network Trade Era on the Chinese(Asian)Economy

With the rapid development of the Internet and information technology,network trade has emerged and broken through the traditional trade boundaries in the rapidly developing information technology.Therefore,with the advent of the information age,network trade has had a series of impacts on China’s economy,which has given wings to the take-off of China’s economy,but also made the development of China’s economy face a new environment and new challenges.Based on this,this paper first analyzes the connotation of network trade,and analyzes the impact of the network trade era on China’s economy.Through such a study,it aims to make China better seize the opportunities of the times and meet the challenges of the times in the process of promoting social and economic development,so as to achieve a good and rapid development of the national economy.

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

As a global strategic reserve resource,rare earth has been widely used in important industries,such as military equipment and biomedicine.However,existing analyses based solely on the total volume of rare earth trade fail to uncover the underlying competition and dependency dynamics.To address this gap,this paper employs the principles of trade preference and import similarity to construct dependency and competition networks.Complex network analysis is then employed to study the evolution of the global rare earth trade network from 2002 to 2018.The main conclusions are as follows.The global rare earth trade follows the Pareto principle,and the trade network shows a scale-free distribution.China has emerged as the world’s largest importer and exporter of rare earth since 2017.In the dependency network,China has become the most dependent country since 2006.The result of community division shows that China has separated from the American community and formed new communities with the 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 distribution of competition intensity follows a scale-free distribution.Most countries face low-intensity competition,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.

Accessibility for High Asia:Comparative Perspective on Northern Pakistan's Traffic Infrastructure and Linkages with Its Neighbours in the Hindukush- Karakoram-Himalaya

Starting with a discussion of development concepts which were applied in practice and which followed the developmentalist paradigm the expansion of traffic infrastructure in colonial and post-colonial periods is presented for the High Asian mountain rim. Selective railways and roads are the major feature of this development, which aimed first on serving the convenience of hill station visitors and followed strategic considerations later on. This bias between regional planning and implementation remains a characteristic feature. At the same time traffic infrastructure without asphalt roads is important for the mountain areas, thus breaking up the strong correlation between development and asphalt roads.

Mozambique Ports in the 16th Century： Trade Routes, Changes, and Knowledge in the Indian Ocean Under Portuguese Rule

Arriving to the east African coast in the 16th century, Portuguese faced an important and well-structured commercial network dominated by Muslim merchants. Operating throughout the Indian Ocean and in articulation with the inland African trade routes by way of the coastal settlements from Bazaruto up to the north of Mozambique, this network bustled luxury goods and basic goods benefiting either from a network of inter-personal relationships and kinship that supported the whole business, or from an ancestral knowledge on the techniques and particular procedures indispensable to navigating in the Indian Ocean. This trade made the prosperity of small southern ports, like Sofala or Mozambique long before the Portuguese arrival. However, this trade was so much dependent on the network＇s capacity of organisation and the supply demand relation of the goods involved, as well as on other factors such as the political stability of the African kingdoms, the environmental changes that shaped flows and trade routes or the actual knowledge of the region and of the different forms of organization of local communities. By focusing in the ports of Sofala and Mozambique and the information provided by the Portuguese documents we intend to analyse its evolution during the 16th century in order to understand its role in the Indian Ocean commercial network under Portuguese rule.

Economic importance and structural robustness of the international pesticide trade networks

Pesticides are agricultural inputs that can significantly reduce yield losses,regulate plant growth,effectively liberate agricultural productivity,and improve food security.The availability of pesticides in economies worldwide is ensured by redistribution through international trade,with different economies playing different roles in this process.In this study,we measured and ranked the importance of economies using nine node metrics.We found that the clustering coefficient was negatively correlated with the other eight node metrics,whereas the other eight node metrics were positively correlated with each other and could be grouped into three communities(betweenness;in-degree,PageRank,authority,and in-closeness;out-degree,hub,and out-closeness).We further investigated the structural robustness of international pesticide trade networks proxied by large component size under three types of shocks to economies(node removal in descending,random,and ascending orders).The results showed that,except for the clustering coefficient,international pesticide trade networks are relatively robust under shocks to economies in ascending order but fragile under shocks to economies in descending order.By contrast,removing nodes with a clustering coefficient in ascending and descending order yielded similar robustness curves.Moreover,the structural robustness related to large component size evolved over time and exhibited an inverse U-shaped pattern.

The trade network of the Belt and Road Initiative and its topological relationship to the global trade network

Unimpeded trade is one of the cooperation priorities in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China. On 15 May 2017, the Joint Communique of the Leaders Roundtable of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation reaffirmed the participants＇ shared commitment to build an open economy and ensure free and inclusive trade. The Belt and Road Initiative （BRI） is not only China＇s new action to drive its open and global develoPment, but also a platform for an increasing number of countries to explore free and inclusive trade and promote a universal, rule-based, open, non-discriminatory, and equitable multilateral trade system. It is therefore important to examine BRI and global trade networks. More specifically, the topological relationship between the this article first analyzes the community structure of trade networks using a community detection algorithm, and then estimates the topological relationship between different trade communities. The findings of this article are as follows. First, this research identified three trade communities and two sub-communities in the BRI trade network, in which China is the core, Russia is the sub-core of the biggest trade community, and India, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia are cores of the second trade community （South Asia-West Asia）. Second, it identified five trade communities in the global trade network, centred on China, USA, Russia, India-United Arab Emirates, and Ger- many-Netherlands-France-Britain and other European developed countries. Third, the topo- logical analysis indicated that in the global trade network, most BRI countries are attracted by the core nodes of the BRI regions, such as the China, Russia and India-United Arab Emirates core nodes, and have strong trade contacts with BRI countries. Most Central-East European countries are mainly attracted by Germany-Netherlands-France-Britain and other developed European countries with a low penetration of BRI trade. Although some Southeast Asian countries are incorporated into the Asia-Australia-South Africa community with China as the core, they still need to strengthen trade linkages with BRI countries.

SYMMETRY IN WORLD TRADE NETWORK

ymmetry of the world trade network provides a novel perspective to understand the world-wide trading system. However, symmetry in the world trade network （WTN） has been rarely studied so far. In this paper, the authors systematically explore the symmetry in WTN. The authors construct WTN in 2005 and explore the size and structure of its automorphism group, through which the authors find that WTN is symmetric, particularly, locally symmetric to a certain degree. Furthermore, the authors work out the symmetric motifs of WTN and investigate the structure and function of the symmetric motifs, coming to the conclusion that local symmetry will have great effect on the stability of the WTN and that continuous symmetry-breakings will generate complexity and diversity of the trade network. Finally, utilizing the local symmetry of the network, the authors work out the quotient of WTN, which is the structural skeleton dominating stability and evolution of WTN.

Modeling dual-scale epidemic dynamics on complex networks with reaction diffusion processes

The frequent outbreak of severe foodborne diseases(e.g., haemolytic uraemic syndrome and Listeriosis) in 2011 warns of a potential threat that world trade could spread fatal pathogens(e.g., enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli). The epidemic potential from trade involves both intra-proliferation and inter-diffusion. Here, we present a worldwide vegetable trade network and a stochastic computational model to simulate global trade-mediated epidemics by considering the weighted nodes and edges of the network and the dual-scale dynamics of epidemics. We address two basic issues of network structural impact in global epidemic patterns:(1) in contrast to the prediction of heterogeneous network models, the broad variability of node degree and edge weights of the vegetable trade network do not determine the threshold of global epidemics;(2) a ‘penetration effect', by which community structures do not restrict propagation at the global scale, quickly facilitates bridging the edges between communities, and leads to synchronized diffusion throughout the entire network. We have also defined an appropriate metric that combines dual-scale behavior and enables quantification of the critical role of bridging edges in disease diffusion from widespread trading. The unusual structure mechanisms of the trade network model may be useful in producing strategies for adaptive immunity and reducing international trade frictions.

区域一体化视角下RCEP自贸区的商品贸易结构分析

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP) was formally signed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) countries, along with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. This was a significant step towards regional integration in the Asia-Pacific region. Analysing the trade structure among member states is crucial in understanding the path to regional integration and policy implications of regional cooperation within the RCEP framework. Based on subdivided commodity data, this study reviews the evolution of merchandise trade in the RCEP region in the past two decades. It investigates the current trade structure of the RCEP, emphasising the relative importance of intra-regional versus extra-regional interdependence and the trade asymmetry of the regional members. The results of the study are as follows: First, the overall extent of regional trade integration in the RCEP region increased modestly from 2001 to 2018, indicating that the RCEP region was export-oriented and there was significant room for further expansion of regional trade. Second, most of the commodities traded in the RCEP region demonstrated much higher extra-regional interdependence than intra-regional in 2018, particularly labor-, capital-, and technology-intensive products such as television and radio apparatus. Third, the trade networks of the top five traded commodities were distinguished by large economic asymmetries, with China, Japan, and South Korea being the dominant regional powers. These findings have significant implications for understanding how to promote regional integration and cooperation. Besides expanding intra-regional trade, outward-oriented factors influenced by the regional powers—including consolidating the global advantages of manufacturing, stabilizing supply chains by including large resource countries, and attracting extra-regional investments—were also the main rationales for the conclusion of the RCEP.