Inorganic mineral scaling is one of the most common oilfield chemical problems in the process of oil and gas development，which greatly affects the efficiency of oil and gas development，production and transportation. In recent years，shale oil and gas play an increasingly important role in China 's energy landscape. However，the extremely low porosity of shale oil and gas reservoirs leads to scaling of inorganic minerals，which brings more serious problems. Because China is mainly dominated by continental shale oil，the key factors such as reservoir formation mechanism，thermal evolution degree，diagenesis strength and mineral composition are very different from those of marine shale oil in North America，which leads to different fracturing technologies and fracturing fluid formulations. The formation mechanism of scaling is very different from that of North America， which also poses a great challenge to scaling prevention and control. In order to support the scale prevention practices in shale oil production of China，based on the characteristics of shale reservoirs in China，the differences and typical characteristics of scaling mechanisms caused by different development technologies resulting from different shale reservoir endowments was summarized. Furthermore，the research advances were systematically summarized from the aspects of scaling causes，scaling risk predictions and scale inhibition mechanism and kinetics. Finally，aligned with the current research status and actual engineering needs in China，the urgent problems to be solved in the future research on scaling in theoretical basic research，industry norms and standards development and engineering application were put forward，which provided reference and guidance for further research on scaling mechanism and development of prevention and control technology from the perspective of oilfield chemistry.