Based on historic in2situ ocean primary production data and other environment data from the southern Yellow Sea and East China Sea and consideration of the processes of phytoplankton photosynthesis , a ocean primary production model was developed through the nonlinear least square method. The fitted model was a function of the sea surface chlorophyll , sea surface irradiance , sea surface temperature and transparency. Since the mean chlorophyll concentration was closely related to surface chlorophyll concentration ( R = 0. 91 with data from 242 stations) within the euphotic layer , but neither the total chlorophyll concentration , nor the depth of the euphotic layer did , we introduced another parameter , the transparency which could be derived from SeaWiFS’s data to obtain the euphotic depth. The ocean primary production data could be derived from satellite2based data by our developed model without requiring other data as input. Comparing the model derived daily depth2integrated primary production to the measured one showed a very good result. The monthly distribution of ocean primary production in China Sea was computed using the developed model with chlorophyll , transparency and irradiance data derived from SeaWiFS from January to December in 2000 and the corresponding temperature data from NOAA214. The results showed that there were clear seasonal changes for the primary production in Bohai Sea , Yellow Sea and East China Sea. The primary production reached its highest in May and lowest in February in East China Sea , while it was high in August and low in February in Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea. Since we did not have the synchronous data to evaluate the accuracy of the derivation , this model needs to be examined and modified in the future with more available data.