An introduction to petroleum and natural gas exploration and production research in China

China is a huge country in eastern Asia. It is the world’s most populous country with a population of 1.3 billion. Most of the Chinese people live in densely populated areas in the eastern third of the country where most of China’s major cities and nearly all the farming land are located. About 36% of the people live in regional cities and towns and the rest live in rural areas. Mainland China has 10 cities with a population of more than 3 million each in the urban area. They are Shanghai, Beijing (capital of the nation), Chongqing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Harbin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Nanjing (Fig. 1). As one of the world’s oldest civilization, China has a written history of nearly 4000 years. The Chinese people take great pride in their nation’s long history. A fossil anthropoid unearthed in the town of Yuanmou in Yunnan Province, southwest China is referred as ‘‘Yuanmou Man’’, who lived about 1.7 million years ago and is China’s earliest primitive man known so far. ‘‘Peking Man’’, who lived in the Zhoukoudian area near Beijing 600,000 years ago, was able to walk upright and could make and use simple tools. The Neolithic age started in China approximately 10,000 years ago. Relics from this period have been found all over China. The Xia Dynasty (family of rulers) was found in 2070 B.C. Its activities were centered along the Yellow River in the central China. The Xia Dynasty is the earliest known Chinese dynasty and was succeeded by the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 B.C.) and the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 B.C.). The following Spring and Autumn (770–476 B.C.) and Warring States (475–221 B.C.) saw the decline in