Abstract: Abundant petroleum resources reside in the South China Sea, an important target area for the offshore petroleum exploration in China and also one of the hotspots for the petroleum exploration in the world. In the light of the theories of modern tectonic geology and geodynamics and balanced cross section technique, the authors in this study contend that the western part of the central South China Sea has gone through three stages of tectonic evolution since the Cenozoic, including rifting,down-warping, and regional subsidence. The dynamic mechanisms contain the distal effects triggered by the Indian-Eurasian plate collision at the latest Eocene and the subduction effects of the Western Pacific plate toward the East Asian continental margin during the Oligocene.