402 bp length fragments of mitochondrial cytochrome b gene from 9 species of genus Lutjanidae in South China Sea were cloned and sequenced. The resulting data were combined with homologous sequences of 9 species in western Atlantic in America and 1 species in Philippines of Lutjanidae downloaded from GenBank to form the analysis matrix. Molecular phylogenetic trees were constructed by neighbor-joining (NJ) and maximum parsimony (MP) methods based on 316 bp Cyt b gene sequences, with Cyprinus carpio as the designated outgroup. The results show that nucleotide sequence divergence is only 0.32% between L.erythropterus and L.sanguineus, supporting that L.erythropterus and L.sanguineus may be synonyms. The nucleotide sequence divergence among the South China Sea Lutjanidae is higher than that among the western Atlantic Lutjanidae. Both NJ and MP trees indicated a closer relationship in the western Atlantic Lutjanidae than in the South China Sea Lutjanidae. South China Sea Lutjanidae is basal in the NJ and MP tree and diverged before western Atlantic Lutjanidae[Acta Zoologica Sinica动物学报wuxuebaoica Sinica52(3):52(3): 514–521, 2006].