The global cotton trade network reveals a shift in the cotton import center to the global south from 1986 to 2020

The global cotton trade network (CTN) has profoundly reshaped the spatial and temporal patterns of the global textile industry. Within the global CTN, a vast empire of cotton that connects continents worldwide has been built, and its center has shifted in time and space in response to intensive global cooperation and economic development. The rapid economic development of developing countries led to a shift in the center of the global CTN from 1986 to 2020. Thus, we propose the hypothesis that the cotton import center has shifted to developing countries/regions. We analyzed the evolution of the global CTN pattern from the perspective of complex network theory. The results showed that the cotton trade expanded in terms of the scale and spatial configuration of global flows and tended to be dominated by core countries. The cotton import center shifted from developed countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Italy, to developing countries, such as China, Bangladesh, Turkey and Indonesia. The cotton export center shifted from Asia to the United States and Brazil. The global CTN community evolved from a “multipolar” balanced pattern to a “unipolar” imbalanced pattern. Global institutional, political and international trade shifts profoundly affected the global CTN. Economic development level and natural resource endowment were the dominant drivers of network formation. Recently, the effects of the distance between trading countries, the use of a common official language and international organizations have diminished. The findings regarding the shift in the cotton center to the Global South from 1986 to 2020 provide scientific evidence for understanding the evolution of the global CTN.