The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of significant seawater salinity anomalies

along the Chinese coast. It is a tutorial demonstration of the new powerful options

available from the new TEOS-10 standard with respect to sea salt composition variations.

Caused by riverine dissolved lime discharge, significant anomalies are found similar in 

magnitude to those of the Baltic, unexpectedly, as the China Sea is not a semi-enclosed basin.

The GSW salinity-anomaly climatology does not include the anomalies described here and

may require a similar regional CaCO3 "exception" as already implemented for the Baltic.

There are no technical or language problems of the paper to be raised.

Publication of this novel and instructive study is recommended with only few minor edits.

Technical corrections:

Abstract: "Instead of silicate, CaCO3 originating... " Say why silicate is mentioned here

line 116: spell out GSW

line 211: typo "heavily influenced"

line 241: spell out PIC

Review is in the attached document.

The authors present the Absolute Salinity Anomaly distribution in Chinese shelf waters where the Absolute Salinity Anomaly is expected to be largely affected by river waters. These information about the Absolute Salinity Anomaly and dataset used are valuable and should be published by Ocean Science, because to observe these shelf waters might be difficult by countries other than China. I have some comments for this manuscript, and it is recommended that these comments are considered before publication.

Data availability: Is the dataset used in this manuscript publicly available? A data availability statement should be noted.

Line 1: A term “China Sea” in the title is unclear. It should be changed correctly, such as “Chinese shelf waters” or “Chinese offshore waters” from the text, or “the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China Seas” for more correctly.

Lines 98-99: “Total Alkalinity ΔTA” should be changed to “Total Alkalinity (TA)”, and “Total Dissolved Inorganic Carbon, ΔDIC” should be changed to “Total Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC)”.

Line 101: “Ryan (2014)” should be changed to “Ryan et al., (2014)”. Also, Feistel (2011) is cited at Line 117, but it does not exist in the references. Please check all citations and references.

Line 104: Please explain what ΔN[Ca²⁺] is, similarly to the explanation of Δ[NTA] above (Lines 98-99).

Line 145: Judging from Table 1, “from 0 to 0.30 g kg^-1” should be changed to “from -0.05 to 0.28 g kg^-1”. Also, Lines 159 and 266 should be corrected accordingly.

Line 157: The minimum value (-0.05 g kg^-1) seems to be quite large negative value. It should be noted which property (TA or DIC) contributes to the large negative value.

Line 241: “PIC” should be changed to “Particulate Inorganic Carbon (PIC)”.