Abstract: Some temporal-spatial phenomenon of abnormal seismic activity tends to occur around the focus of succeeding strong earthquakes, and there are several methods to analyze and extract these characteristics. A strong earthquake predicting method named RTP (Reverse Tracing of Precursory), which is differed from conventional methods, has been introduced in this paper and used to perform some retrospective study on several M_S≥7.5 earthquake (including the May 12, 2008, Wenchuan M_S8.0 earthquake) in the past 30 years from mainland China. To some degree, the result of the study shows that this method is applicable to the strong earthquake prediction in the mainland of China. At last, we make a prediction of strong seismic activities in mainland of China.

Key words: Mainland China, Reverse tracing, Earthquake chain, Medium-term pattern, Earthquake prediction