Abstract: The South China Sea is one of the four major marine petroleum accumulation centers in the world and also China's only marginal sea where oceanic crust is developed. Petroleum exploration shows that petroleum fields in the South China Sea are distributed in the northern, western and southern continental-margin sedimentary basins and that large- and medium-sized petroleum fields are concentrated in basins of the western sea area. These basins are from north to south the Yinggehai-Qiongdongnan basin, Wan'an basin, Meigong basin, Zengmu basin and Brunei-Sabah basin. They contain mainly gas and subordinately oil. Moreover, there are several large potential petroleum-bearing basins in deep-water areas of the region. Further studies indicate that the petroleum distribution of the South China Sea has close relationship with the deep lithospheric structure. Tectonically, the petroleum-bearing basins in the South China Sea are located on or at the edges of the lithospheric blocks, controlled by the development and evolution of large lithospheric faults. The Moho surfaces in these basins are uplifted remarkably and form mirror images of the basin basements. The crust of the basins is only several kilometers thick at the thinnest site, where the heat flow values are notably higher than those in their surrounding areas. The thickness of the thermal lithosphere is reduced greatly. Seismic topographic imaging shows that at depths of these basins an enormous NW-trending uplift zone of the upper mantle extends from the Red River Mouth southeastward through the southwest sub-basin of the South China Sea to the northeast of Borneo, which macroscopically controls the petroleum distribution and accumulation of the South China Sea.