The 12 May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (MS=8.0) ruptured the Longmen Shan range between the eastern Tibetan Plateau and the Sichuan Basin, killed at least 87,165 people, and damaged 32.38 million homes. The scientific workforce of the nation should be immediately built to advance our understanding of continental earthquake's formation and spatial and temporal distributions through detailed and comprehensive studies of active faults. The tectonic model of continental extrusion proposed by Paul Tapponnier and his coworkers is as revolutionary as was seafloor spreading some four decades ago. The uplift and lateral growth of the Tibetan Plateau and resulting northeastward continental extrusion, induced by the northward penetration of India into Asia, are the main cause of seismicity in the Chinese continental crust west of the Tanlu fault zone and its prolongation to the Hainan Island. This paper provides a new overview of how viably the model of continental extrusion explains the active faulting and seismicity in the Chinese continent.