Mapping the architecture of global maritime trade: a network perspective on strategic interdependencies

The maritime sector, encompassing the production and trade of ships, boats, and floating structures, is a strategically significant and capital-intensive domain with profound economic and geopolitical implications. This study investigates the global trade structure of this sector through a complex network lens, moving beyond traditional aggregate trade statistics to reveal relational patterns, community formations, and systemic dependencies. Using bilateral trade data from 2022 to 2024, a weighted, directed network of trading countries is constructed, with rigorous preprocessing to filter significant flows and standardize country identifiers. Community detection uncovers five distinct clusters, reflecting geographic proximity, regulatory regimes, industrial specialization, and institutional functions such as ship ownership and flag states. Centrality analysis, combining normalized degree and betweenness measures, identifies key global hubs, strategic intermediaries, and peripheral participants, highlighting the disproportionate influence of countries such as China, South Korea, and the United States. A quadrant-based visualization provides nuanced insights into the structural and strategic roles of each actor within the maritime trade ecosystem. Findings reveal a highly polarized and modular network, characterized by concentrated production capacity, technological hierarchies, and interdependent trade communities. These results carry important implications for trade resilience, industrial policy, strategic autonomy, and the design of robust global maritime logistics networks. By integrating network theory with sector-specific trade analysis, this study offers both methodological innovation and actionable insights for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and researchers in international trade and strategic maritime studies