Critical Materials Atlas
Method · network position

The trade routes concentration misses

Top-exporter share tells you how concentrated a material's trade is. It says nothing about who sits on the routes. Treating each material's bilateral flows as a directed network surfaces the brokers and processing hubs that the customs ledger hides — and a node-removal test shows how far the network fragments without them.

A country can hold a small export share yet be the node everything routes through. This finds those brokers and processing hubs — and tests how much of the trade breaks without them.
How it’s built, and how to read it

I build each material’s directed, value-weighted trade network and rank countries by betweenness (brokerage) and PageRank (recursive flow importance), then classify the top broker against the refining stage: a processing chokepoint is also the top refiner (centrality coincides with refining dominance), a redistribution hub is a big importer that re-distributes, a transit hub is a curated entrepot (re-export, not control). The last column is a resilience test: the share of supply→demand routes that break when that single node is removed.

Read with care: betweenness on a trade network also reflects import size — a big buyer scores high without “controlling” anything — so treat this as trade-routing centrality (exploratory), and “processing chokepoint” as “most-central and the top refiner”, not proof of control. Computed by build_network.py.

Who sits on the trade routes

Weighted tally of top-3 brokerage appearances across all 32 materials, beside how many each leads as exporter. The gap is the point: the most-central nodes are processing and redistribution hubs, not the resource-rich exporters.

#Countrybroker scoreexports #1
1🇨🇳 China459
2🇩🇪 Germany401
3🇺🇸 United States301
4🇳🇱 Netherlands entrepot hub200
5🇬🇧 United Kingdom120
6🇫🇷 France100
7🇯🇵 Japan61
8🇹🇷 Turkey52
9🇧🇪 Belgium entrepot hub40
10🇮🇹 Italy20
11🇪🇸 Spain20
12🇧🇷 Brazil21

Per material — exporter vs network chokepoint

MaterialTop exporterNetwork chokepointtypefragility
Rare-earth permanent magnets🇨🇳 China 64%🇨🇳 China 64% exp · 33% throughprocessing chokepoint4%
Palladium, unwrought🇿🇦 South Africa 25%🇩🇪 Germany 6% exp · 11% throughredistribution hub13%
Germanium ⛓🇨🇳 China 32%🇩🇪 Germany 19% exp · 15% throughredistribution hub10%
Gallium ⛓🇨🇳 China 32%🇩🇪 Germany 19% exp · 15% throughredistribution hub10%
Hafnium, unwrought ⛓🇨🇳 China 32%🇩🇪 Germany 19% exp · 15% throughredistribution hub10%
Feldspar🇹🇷 Turkey 43%🇹🇷 Turkey 43% exp · 22% throughprocessing chokepoint7%
Aluminium ores / bauxite🇬🇳 Guinea 72%🇨🇳 China 2% exp · 44% throughprocessing chokepoint19%
Refined copper cathodes🇨🇩 Congo [DRC] 24%🇩🇪 Germany 1% exp · 3% throughredistribution hub5%
Tantalum, unwrought🇺🇸 United States 22%🇺🇸 United States 22% exp · 25% throughexporter chokepoint16%
Manganese ore🇿🇦 South Africa 50%🇨🇳 China 1% exp · 31% throughprocessing chokepoint25%
Silicon, < 99.99%🇨🇳 China 40%🇨🇳 China 40% exp · 22% throughprocessing chokepoint11%
Nickel, unwrought🇳🇴 Norway 18%🇳🇱 Netherlands 7% exp · 12% throughtransit hub10%
Titanium, unwrought🇯🇵 Japan 34%🇺🇸 United States 12% exp · 24% throughredistribution hub6%
Platinum, unwrought🇿🇦 South Africa 37%🇬🇧 United Kingdom 9% exp · 8% throughredistribution hub3%
Cobalt oxides & hydroxides🇫🇮 Finland 29%🇨🇳 China 19% exp · 10% throughprocessing chokepoint6%
Natural graphite🇨🇳 China 36%🇨🇳 China 36% exp · 30% throughprocessing chokepoint14%
Phosphate rock🇯🇴 Jordan 24%🇨🇳 China 1% exp · 3% throughprocessing chokepoint19%
Phosphorus🇻🇳 Vietnam 47%🇯🇵 Japan 1% exp · 7% throughredistribution hub4%
Ferro-niobium🇧🇷 Brazil 76%🇳🇱 Netherlands 8% exp · 12% throughtransit hub12%
Helium🇶🇦 Qatar 28%🇺🇸 United States 16% exp · 10% throughredistribution hub15%
Coking coal🇦🇺 Australia 39%🇬🇧 United Kingdom 0% exp · 0% throughredistribution hub8%
Baryte🇮🇳 India 18%🇳🇱 Netherlands 4% exp · 4% throughtransit hub3%
Ferro-vanadium🇦🇹 Austria 21%🇩🇪 Germany 1% exp · 6% throughredistribution hub3%
Lithium carbonate🇨🇱 Chile 75%🇨🇳 China 2% exp · 34% throughprocessing chokepoint18%
Tungsten, unwrought🇨🇳 China 74%🇩🇪 Germany 1% exp · 5% throughredistribution hub11%
Magnesium, unwrought🇨🇳 China 71%🇺🇸 United States 0% exp · 8% throughredistribution hub11%
Fluorspar, >97% CaF2🇲🇽 Mexico 38%🇨🇳 China 8% exp · 5% throughprocessing chokepoint23%
Antimony, unwrought🇹🇯 Tajikistan 31%🇯🇵 Japan 0% exp · 6% throughredistribution hub3%
Strontium carbonate🇩🇪 Germany 60%🇨🇳 China 11% exp · 17% throughprocessing chokepoint38%
Natural borates🇹🇷 Turkey 56%🇺🇸 United States 1% exp · 3% throughredistribution hub16%
Arsenic🇨🇳 China 34%🇩🇪 Germany 13% exp · 14% throughredistribution hub18%
Beryllium, unwrought🇰🇿 Kazakhstan 89%🇫🇷 France 6% exp · 3% throughredistribution hub32%

11 of 32 materials have a processing chokepoint — a network broker that is also the dominant refiner. ⛓ gallium/germanium/hafnium share one HS6 code. Computed from flows_2024.json → network.json.

China's network centrality over time

Network centrality captures China as the processing/redistribution hub — importer and broker, not just exporter — so it rises even where China barely exports (it imports the ore). Bold = China's average throughput share across all 32 materials; thin lines = materials where China is the processing hub. Throughput = share of a material's trade value touching China. Measured 2002–2024; same trade-routing-centrality caveat as above.