Decoding China's natural gas development: A critical discourse analysis of the five-year plans

Abstract

Whether or not China's current policies are sufficient to speed up promoting the contribution of natural gas to the country's total energy supply is a critical question, particularly given China's present energy consumption structure and environmental condition. The nation's Five-Year Plans (FYPs) guide the society –ideologically and practically – in understanding the necessity, problems and future of China's natural gas development (NGD). Therefore, a critical discourse analysis (CDA) is conducted under Fairclough's CDA model. The model has three tiers: text, discursive practice and social practice. The textual analysis finds that the FYPs have considerable and critical fragmentation, incoherence, vagueness, and subject absence. The discursive practice analysis finds that the FYPs use effective strategies to ignore critical problems and are dominated by the technical perspective. The social practice analysis reveals that the textual features, discursive strategies and perspective dominance are possibly caused by the stakeholders’ varied interests and internal power struggles. This study concludes that China's natural gas penetration may not be as quick as expected, unless the institutional reform of NGD is first prioritized and more domestic natural gas suppliers are brought in to intensify market competition. Important recommendations for improving the FYPs are given at the conclusion.