<p>The South China Sea is surrounded by many large cities with developed economy and dense population along the coast, where tsunamis are major potential disasters within the sea area. Therefore, a dataset and comprehensive assessment of potential tsunami scenarios are an important foundation for design of coastal and ocean engineering, disaster prevention and mitigation strategy. Based on historical seismic records and geodetic observation data, this study integrates ocean dynamic model, the fault coupling inversion and source uncertainty analysis, to construct a potential tsunami scenario dataset in the South China Sea. The scenario dataset covers all possibilities of tsunamis caused by earthquakes with <i>M</i>_<i>w</i> ≥ 7. Both tsunami height and period have been systematically provided, which has not been given by existing researches. The dataset allows users to obtain the joint probability distribution of tsunami wave height and period at any location of interest in the South China Sea, providing key parameters for hazard prevention and mitigation.</p>