In view of the shortcomings of the design concept and approach of Chinese current Code for Seismic Design of Water Transport Engineering,we summarize four typical failure modes of pile-supported wharf,and focus on comparing the specific requirements of the seismic design criteria,conceptual design,elastoplastic analysis method in the international and Chinese current codes about seismic design of wharf structure.The calculation results of example show that the results of the coefficient modification method recommended by FEMA-440 are basically consistent with the modal spectral method and substitute structure method.