Abstract: Typical foreland basinsare generally located in the narrow trough between the orogenic belt and the stable craton.The South Yellow Sea Basin,however, is rather special. It is a "reactivated" foreland basin, formed by continental collision between North China and the Yangtze and superimposed later by the post Pacific Tectonic movement. Even if it is altered and destroyed by multiple tectonic movements later on, it still keeps relatively complete wedge-top, foredeep, forebulge and back-bulge. We defined in this paperthe locations of various depositionalzones.The wedge-top depositional zone is located in the Qianliyan uplift, theforedeep depositional zone located in the northeast depression, the forebulge depositional zone located in the Rushan bulge, and the back-bulge depositional zone located between the Rushan bulge and the central uplift. From three aspects of earthquake, sedimentation and tectonics, we analyze the tectonic and depositional characteristics of each zone of the system.