Abstract: The Recent freshwater ichthyofauna from the Japanese islands is, in many respects, different from that of eastern China. The Pliocene and Miocene ones from both areas, however, resemble each other in a greater extent in composition than the Recent ones. The Early Tertiary, i.e. Eocene fish fauna along the coast of the Bohai Gulf, east China shows striking similarity in composition to those of the same age along the west coast of North America demonstrating a "transpacific" distributional pattern. According to their composition and distribution the late Mesozoic, i. e. the Early Cretaceous freshwater ichthyofauna from China, can be subdivided into two distinct assemblages. The one from North China is endemic, while the one from southeastern China exhibits some affinities with the Early Cretaceous ichthyofaunas from northeastern South America and West Africa displaying a distributional pattern involving both northern and southern continents. Discussions on and tentative interpretations about the distributional patterns mentioned above are given in the text.