Analysis of characteristics of global LNG trade network and China’s LNG imports

In the background of carbon neutrality, as a clean energy, LNG has been playing a more and more important role in the global energy consumption market.The study of global LNG trade network could help to understand the current LNG trade characteristics and provide a reference for China’s LNG foreign trade and energy strategic security.This paper combines the complex network analysis method with the most cutting-edge point-wise mutual information theory in the field of international relations, studies the characteristics and development trends of the global LNG trade network from the country and station levels, innovatively introduces PMI, analyzes the preference relationship and dependency relationship between the three major LNG importing countries and each trade node, and focus on analyzing the source and evolution trend of China’s LNG import.The research show that the global LNG trade network is in a growing phase, with extremely low network density and insufficient trade relations between sites; the trade network presents a power-law distribution.The importance of several sites is significantly higher than that of other sites, and the out-degree distribution is more obvious than the in-degree distribution.In the structure of LNG trade associations, the leading countries are Qatar, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia, and the organization structure indicates geographic factors are the most important influencing factor in LNG trade.The PMI analysis results show that Japan and China’s import diversification trend is better than South Korea.China’s LNG import concentration is extremely high, although import channels have changed to diversification, they are still extremely dependent on Australia and Qatar.Affected by political factors and geographical factors, LNG import security is at a greater risk.