REE space: as REEs become technologically and hence economically ever more relevant, its extraction and commercialisation is dominated by only a few countries, with the leading role of China. This has led to international tensions and to set up research programmes motivating innovation in REE chemistry (SI). Our results show that China not only controls the extraction and trade of REEs but also leads the exploration of their chemical space (Figure ). Nonetheless, REE space grows slowly (Figure ). While earlier the shares were distributed among several countries, China became dominant already by 2004, with a current share of the REE space of about 40%, while most of the top contributors slowed down their discoveries (Figure ). The drop is particularly dramatic for Japan. India, in contrast, grew from 5% in 1996 to 10% today. Russia also grew, but less steadily. Currently, however, China's contribution is four times that of the second largest producers of REE compounds: India and Russia (Figure ). China-US collaboration has grown from less than 1% of the share of the REE space before 2008 to 2% in 2020. However, over the following two years, presumably as the result of a blend of pandemic and political factors that include, for instance the American China initiative, the collaboration declined, and it currently represents 0.86% of the REE CS. Despite the geopolitic dynamics of the CS, the chemical nature of the CS has remained untouched, as the chemical composition of substances of each one of the three analysed chemical subspaces has not been affected (Figure ).