Late Cenozoic evolution of East China continental margin and restoration of plate interaction processes

The tectonic activities of the continental margin of eastern China during the Late Cenozoic were mainly concentrated on the eastern margin of the East China Sea. Since the Miocene, a series of major tectonic processes, such as the subduction of the Philippine plate, the back-arc rifting of the Okinawa Trough and the Taiwan arc-continent collision, have shaped the present tectonic-geomorphological patterns of the Ryukyu trench-arc-back-arc basin system, the Taiwan collision orogenic belt and the northeastern South China Sea. Based on the interpretation of gravity, magnetism and multi-channel seismic data and combined with previous research results, the authors restored the tectonic evolution history of the Okinawa Trough and clarified the relationship between the back-arc tension of the Okinawa Trough and the Taiwan arc-land collision. On such a basis, the interaction processes between the Eurasian plate, the Philippine Sea plate and the South China Sea plate since Miocene were reconstructed, and a new model of plate interaction was proposed. This work is helpful to the further understanding of the constraints and effects of deep dynamic and thermal processes on shallow tectonic framework changes in the context of plate convergence on the East Asian continental margin.