Precipitation intensity is one of important meteorological factors determining occurrence of extreme hydro events and variation of available water resources. China is a country with frequent floods/droughts and unbalanced demand/supply of water resources. To reveal the climate change rhythms and deal with water resources issues, it is valuable to research the temporal and spatial variations of precipitation intensity. Using the daily precipitation measurements during 1961-2010 from 756 stations across China, we researched the inter-annual and inter- decadal variations of precipitation intensity for the light, moderate, heavy and storm rainfall, respectively, and quantified their impacts on total precipitation. The overall trend of variations of precipitation intensity is positive. Such a positive trend was mainly observed in the region south of Qinling Mountains and the Huaihe River. Among the four grades of rainfall, the light rainfall intensity has the strongest positive trend; whereas, the moderate, heavy and storm rainfalls have no significant trends. The precipitation intensity also had obvious inter- decadal variations. At decadal scale, the precipitation intensity was weak in the 1960s and 1970s while it was strong since the 1980s. The contribution of precipitation intensity variations to total precipitation spatially occurred in the order oflarge- small- large- smallfrom east to west. The storm rainfall plays a dominant role in the variations of total precipitation in the eastern China, particularly in the southeast of Northeast China, west of North China and middle of Southwest China. The light, moderate and heavy rainfalls play a dominant role in the variations of total precipitation in the western China.