China holds a long coastline(approximately 18,000 km) and covers three different climatic zones ranging from temperate to tropical regions.Its coastal waters are known to hold a vast but hitherto largely unexplored and even undescribed biodiversity of marine macro-and microorganisms that have hardly been studied so far in a systematic manner for bioactive compounds in the field of anti-cancer agents.Chinese marine resources still hold a plethora of uninvestigated organisms with uninvestigated natural products that need to be tapped and evaluated systematically for bioactive natural products.Only in recent years has China started to become aware of its natural marine resources and is now launching major research programs directed at the discovery of novel bioactive compounds from marine organisms.