Assessing the international co-opetition dynamics of rare earth resources between China, USA, Japan and the EU: An ecological niche approach

As one of the basic raw materials for the development of strategic emerging industries, rare earth resources (RERs) are regarded as strategic critical minerals by many countries such as China, the USA, Japan and the EU. In recent years, rare earth resources have become the focus of world great power competition. However, a dynamic evolutionary trend of the co-opetition relationships between the global major economies competing for rare earth resources is still unknown in the existing literature. To this end, in this study we constructed a dynamic index system for assessing the rare earth (RE) resource co-opetition relationships between the world major countries in five dimensions, i.e., endowment of resources, scale of economy, infrastructure, trade market and technological innovation, and revealed the dynamic evolutionary trends of the co-opetition relationships between China, USA, Japan and the EU by adopting the ecological niche models using a panel dataset from 2008 to 2021. The results indicate that: (1) China, the USA, Japan and the EU have significant differences in the overall competitive advantages of rare earth resources, China's competitive advantage is obvious, followed by USA and Japan, while the EU is the weakest; (2) Among the four major economies, the competition for rare earth resources between the USA, Japan and the EU has always been fierce. The degrees of competition between China and the other three major economies are different. The most fierce competition with China is the USA, followed by Japan, and China's competition with the two countries is increasing. The competition between China and the EU is the weakest; (3) The most advantageous dimensions in the ecological niche of rare earth resources in these four countries vary greatly. Finally, we proposed corresponding policy recommendations based on these conclusions.