Abstract: We selected the Pearl River Mouth Basin, the Qiongdongnan Basin and the Zhongjiannan Basin as the three targets for study of the Cenozoic tectonic migration in the Northern South China Sea. Interpretation was carried out for the seismic profiles across the above basins. Integrated methods, such as seismostratigraphy, structural geology and others, were adopted to reveal the Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the northern South China Sea and the tectonic evolutionary pattern of each basin in order to find out the history of tectonic migration and regional differences on the northern margin of the South China Sea. The results proved that Cenozoic tectonic migration did happen in this region following N-S direction. Tectonic events became gradually younger from the Pearl River Mouth Basin to the Qiongdongnan Basin and from the Pearl River Mouth Basin to the Zhongjiannan Basin. The rifting apart of the South China Sea started from the north, and gradually moved southward. In spite of the influence of the Red River fault zone, the intensity of the rifting process became weaker from north to south as well. The tectonic migration would certainly make the tectonic pattern of subsidence as well as depositional centers more complicated.