The current scheme of building climate zones in China generally assumes that building climate zones of island cities are identical to adjacent land stations. Consequently, building design strategies for island buildings usually refer to those developed for inland cities. This approach has to some extent hindered the energyesaving design and green development of island buildings in China.This research takes a first step on this issue by defining the building climate zones of 36 marine islands over China marine area using two-stage zoning methodology adopted by current building climate zoning standard (GB50178-1993). The meteorological data used for analysis was obtained from the National Climate Center of China over the 30-year period from 1985 to 2014. As comparison, 40 coastal stations which are adjacent to the investigated marine islands were also included in this study. Subsequently a more objective techniquedcluster analysis was operated as an effective supplement to discover the climate characteristics among different observations. The results of both methodologies consistently show that among the 36 islands investigated, the majority of islands located in northern and eastern marine area belong to the same climate zones as their adjacent coastal cities. However, island cities in southern marine area cannot be assigned to any current climate zone, which was demonstrated by its distinctive climate features different from any other sites investigated through cluster analysis as well as different energy use patterns. Thus a new zone was defined to supplement the current building climate zoning scheme to cover marine area of China.