South China, India and their derivative terranes/blocks preserve a larger amount of similar magmatic and sedimentary records related to the tectonic transition from Rodinia to Gondwana. They provide crucial insights into not only the paleogeographic correlation between them but also the geodynamic mechanism for such a transition. Our new results together with published big data from these terranes/blocks point out that South China kept a linkage with India at least from the late Tonian (ca. 830 Ma) to Early Cambrian and formed the South China-India Duo located at the western margin of Rodinia. The identical magmatism and sedimentation reflect that double late Neoproterozoic rift systems in the South China-India Duo could have developed owing to the rollback of subducting oceanic slab beneath them, including an intracontinental rift (the Nanhua-Aravalli-Delhi rift) separating the Yangtze-Marwar from Cathaysia-Bundelkhand terranes and a contemporaneous intra-arc rift along the northern and western margins of the Yangtze Terrane, through the Marwar Terrane of western India, and then into the Seychelles and Madagascar terranes. Such an intra-arc rift is also the most feasible explanation for the common development of coeval arc-like and extension-related magmatic rocks and extensional sedimentary sequences on the western margin of the South China-India Duo and in Seychelles and Madagascar, and even other subduction zones.