How marketized is China's natural gas industry? A bibliometric analysis

To improve the efficiency of natural gas utilization and stimulate the innovation and vitality of the natural gas market, China is vigorously promoting marketization reform of the natural gas industry. A marketization index is an important tool to evaluate such reform. Using bibliometric analysis, this study establishes a marketization index of China's natural gas industry based on five factors: the relationship between the government and the market, the development of a non-state-owned economy, the degree of upstream market development, the degree of downstream market development, and the development of market intermediary organizations and the legal system. Based on the created index, this study further quantifies the current state of reform and the results show that China's natural gas industry steadily marketized between 2005 and 2018, including two rapid improvements from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2014 to 2016. Consequently, this paper offers some suggestions for market-oriented reform of China's natural gas industry, so as to promote further development of its natural gas market. This study contributes to the literature not only by establishing a new method of constructing a marketization index, but also by addressing a gap in the quantitative research on natural gas marketization, thus providing a standard reference for the future natural gas marketization reform process.