The booming of three-dimensional (3D) land use brings a change of the connotation of land rights, which will expand “flat” 2D land legislation with 3D land legislation. The legal issues of urban underground space for 3D objects in large cities around the world have been attracting more and more attention. A supportive legal framework is crucial for underground space utilization in a country. This paper analyzes the present 173 representative laws and regulations of urban underground space utilization and management of China from 1998 to 2018, and attempts to interpret the current laws and regulations of underground space from four aspects; by quantity, spatial distribution, legislative force and content. The result shows that poor legal framework of urban underground space in China, including low-level of legislative force, disunity of local legislation standard and absence of special statutes and regulations, are the main reasons causing ownership disputation, registration chaos, as well as no unanimous judicial practice. To address these issues, the paper refers to a case study for underground space legal framework in Japan and aims to form a set of top-down unified legal framework, including basic law, special statutes and regulations, as well as supplementary policies and documents of urban underground space, and proposes that the underground space planning should be incorporated as one essential portion of the master planning in China. By studying the legal system of underground space in Japan and China, this study may offer better insight for those conducting UUS legal framework research as well as serve as reference for countries with similar legal issues.

China regards shale gas as a key energy source for ensuring energy security, promoting the transformation of the energy structure, and addressing climate change. However, at this stage, the scarcity of land resources, coupled with various institutional restrictions, has brought numerous practical obstacles to the large-scale commercial development of shale gas. By analyzing the restrictive provisions concerning shale gas development in China’s current laws, this paper points out three major institutional constraints faced by the use of agricultural land for shale gas development: first, stringent land use control policies; second, the legal acquisition system for surface land remains unstable; third, institutional gaps in the supervision of subsurface space on collectively owned land. To overcome these institutional barriers, this study proposes fundamental reform measures for the current land legal framework. If comprehensive reform cannot be achieved immediately, partial breakthroughs may be sought within the existing institutional framework. The sequence has three phases. Near-term one to three years: negative-list quotas, refined land classification, land linkage, benefit balance, and community guidance. No law changes needed; provinces can act. Medium-term three to seven years: regulations and the mining land chapter in the revised Mineral Resources Law. Long-term beyond seven years: constitutional amendment for collective land transfer and dual-track supply reform. This study provides a theoretical reference for solving the land use issues in China’s shale gas development, and its conclusions also provide a reference for resolving the conflicts between shale gas development and agricultural land use in other jurisdictions.