East China Sea

East China Sea
The East China Sea, showing surrounding regions, islands, and seas
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	東海 東中國海
Simplified Chinese	东海 东中国海
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Dōng Hǎi Dōng Zhōngguó Hǎi Bopomofo ㄉㄨㄥ ㄏㄞˇ ㄉㄨㄥ ㄓㄨㄥ ㄍㄨㄛˊ ㄏㄞˇ Wu Romanization ton平 he上 ton平 tson平 koh入 he上 Hakka Romanization dung24 hoi31 dung24 dung24 gued2 hoi31 Yue: Cantonese Jyutping dung1 hoi2 dung1 zung1 gwok3 hoi2 Southern Min Hokkien POJ tong-hái tong tiong-kok hái Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC dĕ̤ng-hāi dĕ̤ng dṳ̆ng-guók hāi
Korean name
Hangul	동중국해
Hanja	東中國海
Transcriptions Revised Romanization Dong Jungguk Hae McCune–Reischauer Tong Jungguk Hae
Japanese name
Kanji	東シナ海 (since 2004) 東支那海 (1913–2004)
Kana	ひがしシナかい
Transcriptions Romanization Higashi Shina Kai

The East China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean, located directly offshore from East China. China names the body of water along its eastern coast as "East Sea" (Dōng Hǎi, simplified Chinese: 东海; traditional Chinese: 東海) due to direction, the name of "East China Sea" is otherwise designated as a formal name by International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and used internationally.^[1]

It covers an area of roughly 1,249,000 square kilometers (482,000 sq mi).^{[citation needed]} The sea's northern extension between Korean Peninsula and mainland China is the Yellow Sea, separated by an imaginary line between the southwestern tip of South Korea's Jeju Island and the eastern tip of Qidong at the Yangtze River estuary.

The East China Sea is bounded in the east and southeast by the middle portion of the first island chain off the eastern Eurasian continental mainland, including the Japanese island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands, and in the south by the island of Taiwan. It connects with the Sea of Japan in the northeast through the Korea Strait, the South China Sea in the southwest via the Taiwan Strait, and the Philippine Sea in the southeast via gaps between the various Ryukyu Islands (e.g. Tokara Strait and Miyako Strait).

Most of the East China Sea is shallow, with almost three-fourths of it being less than 200 metres (660 ft) deep, its average depth being 350 metres (1,150 ft), while the maximum depth, reached in the Okinawa Trough, is 2,716 metres (8,911 ft).^[2]

The Korean peninsula, China, Japan, and Taiwan lie within or border the East China Sea.