Three-fourths of this sea is shallower than two hundred metres
Roughly 1.25 million square kilometres of Western Pacific shelf wash China's eastern shore—the East China Sea, or Dong Hai in Chinese direction-names. Almost three-quarters of it is less than 200 metres deep, yet the Okinawa Trough plunges to 2,716 metres.
Imaginary lines near Jeju divide its northern Yellow Sea extension from the main basin. East and southeast, Kyushu and the Ryukyus form part of the first island chain; Taiwan closes the south. Connections reach the Sea of Japan through Korea Strait and the South China Sea via Taiwan Strait. Korea, China, Japan, and Taiwan all border or claim adjacent waters.
Measurements disagree because definitions do. The 1.25 million figure counts the northern arm up toward the Yellow Sea, whereas a narrower reckoning of the stretch between Kyushu and the Ryukyus on the east, the South China Sea to the south and the Asian mainland to the west gives roughly 770,000 square kilometres. The International Hydrographic Organization draws its limits from the northern tip of Taiwan, past the Miyako group and the southern end of Okinawa, then up through the Goto islands off Kyushu to Jeju. The Yangtze pours in more water than any other river.
Names shift with the speaker. Chinese calls it Dōng Hǎi, the East Sea, one of the Four Seas of classical literature, each tied to a cardinal direction. Japan used a term meaning East Shina Sea until the Second World War and changed the official spelling in 2004 while keeping the pronunciation; Indonesia dropped Cina for Tiongkok in 2014. Beneath the northern waters lie submerged reefs, including Socotra Rock, or Ieodo, over which China and South Korea contest economic-zone rights. American whaling ships hunted right whales here from 1849 to 1892.
Source: East China Sea
