Abstract: Coastal ocean is the transitional zone between the land and the ocean.It extends from coastal Zone to the outer edge of the continental shelves, then continues to continental slopes and continental rises.Approximately matching the region that has been alternately flooded and exposed during the sea level fluctuations of the late Quaternary period, and has covered relatively complete zones with land and ocean interactions.It is an independent environment system which is different from the land and the deep ocean, and is closely related to human living activities.Since ’The United Nations Law of Sea Convention’took effect in 1994, coastal ocean has become a hotspot of the earth sciences domain because of the requirement of maritime sovereignty and resources development.Located on the interaction zone of Asia and the Pacific Ocean, Chinese coast is of various types.The coastal ocean environment and processes are unique due to the river-sea interaction and the influence of human activities.Evolution of China coast reflects the influence of geology, rivers, climate, typhoons, waves, tides, shelf currents, and sea level changes.While tectonics control the broad scale appearance of the coast (either embayed bedrock in emergent regions or plain coast in subsiding regions), rivers dominate the supply of sediment to the sea and help control erosional/accretionary trends.The influence of global change and human activities on river drainage areas also appears in coastal ocean area and affects marine environment remarkably due to the transfixion action of the rivers.The coastal classification was applied to dividing the coast of China into four major sectors.The impact of rivers, waves and tides on coastal processes in each of these sectors varies widely, ranging from river-dominated in the Bohai Sea sector, to wave-dominated in the southern Guangdong/Guangxi sector.The characteristics and problems in the coastal development are analyzed taking the plain coast as an example.The eastern coast has been a living and multiplying place of China for a long time.However, the characteristics of the environmental system of the land-ocean transitional zone have not been well understood.The contemporary large scale development induced a series of problems.The negative effects such as seawater pollution caused the decline of precipitation and freshwater quality, with frequent red tide disasters, and endanger human life.Therefore, more attention should be paid to the study of the environmental characteristics of the land-ocean transitional zone.It is very important to understand the variability of the environmental factors and to standardize the development activities.Historical and realistic examples show that people should investigate the environmental features of the study area, explore the mechanism of its dynamical processes, illustrate the trend of its development, and design projects within the threshold limits to avoid human-induced disasters.