The increasing deterioration of the ecological and environmental conditions and the shortage of biological resources foreseen in the 21st century would pose a serious problem to China's economic development and retard the raising of the standard of living of its people. Mariculture, as a blue agriculture, which promises food from the sea is deemed to play a critical role in providing guarantee of safe food source to feed the 1.6 billion Chinese people in the new century. The course of development of blue agriculture would be approached through ecological and engineering aquaculture involving key strategies as： enhancing basic research as foothold while accelerating the application of high technology to attain rapid turnover of products; conducting “refine species project” aimed at producing high — quality breeds; overall restructuring of present mariculture sites to regulate their size and distribution to rationally balance the needs and demands among the various coastal mariculture industries; using modern biological and engineering technology to practise upper tidal zone and terrestrial ecological engineering aquaculture; with theoretical ecological aquaculture as basis, applying modern engineering technology to make use of offshore areas for developing the. “ facilities fisheries” ； promoting fishery products processing industry to ameliorate the nutritional intake structure of the people.