A new land rush is hitting China. This time, it's not about investments in high-priced urban real estate, but about underground energy resources in provinces such as Guizhou and Anhui. About 70 Chinese companies — from large, state-owned energy companies to private sector firms — are lining up to bid in China's second auction of shale gas exploration rights, expected to take place this summer, according to the China Daily.

"The activity is feverish," says Ming Sung, Shanghai-based chief representative of the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), a Boston nonprofit working with the Chinese government and companies to introduce environmentally responsible shale gas mining practices.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, China leads the world in technically recoverable shale gas — natural gas trapped underground in shale formations that only recently became exploitable due to U.S.-led advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (otherwise known as fracking) of rock to release gas previously too difficult to recover. In an April 2011 study, the EIA estimated that China has 1,275 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas reserves, versus the runner-up — the U.S. with 862 tcf. Other leading countries include Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Australia and Canada.

Over the last decade, China and other countries have witnessed the meteoric rise of the shale gas industry in the U.S. The U.S. holds the keys to technological innovations in drilling and fracking; it is also the world's leader in the sector, with production rising from nearly zero in 2000 to 10 billion cubic feet a day in 2010, according to the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

China would like to catch up to that. Highly dependent on energy imports to power its economy, the country is eager to find a plentiful new fuel source at home. "For China, energy security is paramount," says Wharton management professor Marshall W. Meyer. "Anything they can do to develop supplies they can control, they will do." In its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), China's goal is to produce 6.5 billion cubic meters of shale gas by 2015 and as much as 100 bcm by 2020, or about 6% of total primary energy.