The South China Sea, as ‘a non-volcanic passive margin basin’ in the Pacific, has often been considered as a small-scale analogue of the Atlantic. The recent ocean drilling in the northern South China Sea margin found, however, that the Iberian model of non-volcanic rifted margin from the Atlantic does not apply to the South China Sea. In this paper, we review a variety of rifted basins and propose to discriminate two types of rifting basins: plate-edge type such as the South China Sea and intra-plate type like the Atlantic. They not only differ from each other in structure, formation process, lifespan and geographic size, but also occur at different stages of the Wilson cycle. The intra-plate rifting occurred in the Mesozoic and gave rise to large oceans, whereas the plate-edge rifting took place mainly in the mid-Cenozoic, with three-quarters of the basins concentrated in the Western Pacific. As a member of the Western Pacific system of marginal seas, the South China Sea should be studied not in isolation on its origin and evolution, but in a systematic context to include also its neighboring counterparts.

中文翻译：

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南海不是迷你大西洋：板块边缘裂谷与板块内裂谷


南海作为太平洋上的“非火山被动边缘盆地”，通常被认为是大西洋的小规模类似物。然而，最近在南海北部边缘的大洋钻探发现，大西洋非火山裂谷边缘的伊比利亚模型并不适用于南海。在本文中，我们回顾了各种裂谷盆地，并提出区分两种类型的裂谷盆地：板缘型（如南海）和板内型（如大西洋）。它们不仅在结构、形成过程、寿命和地理大小方面彼此不同，而且发生在威尔逊周期的不同阶段。板内裂谷发生在中生代，形成了大洋，而板缘裂谷主要发生在新生代中期，四分之三的盆地集中在西太平洋。作为西太平洋边缘海系统的一员，南海的研究不应孤立地研究其起源和演变，而应放在一个系统的背景下，将其邻近的对应区域也纳入其中。