The Yinggehai basin is located on the northwestern shelf of the South China Sea. It is the seaward elongation of the Red River Fault Zone (RRFZ). The orientation and rift shape of the Yinggehai basin are mainly controlled by NW-, NNW- and nearly NS-trending basal faults. The depocenter migrated southeastward when the basin developed. The depocenter trended northwest before about 36 Ma, then jumped southward and became nearly N–S trending and migrated toward the southeast up to 21 Ma; thereafter, the depocenter trended northwest again. Based on above and structural evolution in neighbor areas, it is believed that the Yinggehai basin formation was mainly controlled by the extrusion accompanied by clockwise rotation of Indochina. We set up analogue models (thin basal plate model and thick basal plate model) to investigate the evolution of Yinggehai basin. From the experiments, we consider that the basin evolution was related to the extrusion and clockwise rotation of the Indochina block, which was caused by the collision of the Indian plate and Tibet. This process took place in four main stages: (1) Slow rifting stage (before 36 Ma) with a NW-trending depocenter; (2) rifting stage formed by sinistral slip of the Indochina block accompanied by rapid clockwise rotation between 36 and 21 Ma; (3) rifting-thermal subsidence stage affected by sinistral slip of the Indochina (21–5 Ma) block and (4) dextral strike–slip (5–0 Ma).