Epistemological dominance and ignorance of the comparative advantages of China's shale gas: Evidence from international scientific journals

This paper reports on a critical discourse analysis on a collection of international scientific journal articles, which are a critical edge of social epistemology. At the textual surface, the analysis finds that China's shale gas (SG) is compared most frequently with coal and energy imports but rarely with conventional natural gas (CNG) and coalbed methane (CBM), representing a prominent structure of epistemological dominance and ignorance. Situated in this structure there are four prevailing, albeit defective, reasoning forms. The prevalence of those forms suggests that there is a “knowledge deficit” on the comparative advantage of China's SG. This deficit concretely refers to that, the attention paid to the comparative advantage of China's SG toward CNG and CBM, the number of lifecycle-comparisons between energies, and the knowledge about the US shale gas boom, are significantly insufficient. China's energy mix, air quality and energy dependence, the conspicuousness of energy burning, and the nature of human thinking are interwoven factors of this deficit. The epistemological structure and thus the “knowledge deficit” are unfavorable for optimizing China's SG strategy and may delay natural gas' penetration into China's energy mix. This paper, especially its mental model representation, is awareness/introspection provoking to researchers and policy makers.