In recent years many regions are pounded with heavy rainfall, causing flood, casualties, and property damage in many urban areas. Frequent extreme precipitation events under the background of global climate change has caused terrible harm to economic and social development, life security, ecosystem, etc., which has brought profound impact on sustainable development of disaster area. Heavy rainfall has become a key factor of global and regional disasters and environmental risk, and has widely cause concern among academic community and most sectors of the society. According to the existing research results that precipitation in China is greatly affected by various atmospheric, oceanic and other climatic factors. In order to diagnose the temporal and spatial variation characteristics of heavy rainfall in China and its correlation with different climatic indices, here we use daily precipitation observations of 659 meteorological stations in China from 1961 to 2015,based on the heavy rainfall threshold of daily rainfall no less than 50 mm, to calculate heavy rainfall in China. The temporal and spatial variation characteristics of heavy rainfall, including heavy rainfall amounts, heavy rainfall days and heavy rainfall intensity in China, are diagnosed by using various statistical methods such as linear trend, EOF analysis and so on. The results show that China's heavy rainfall amounts, heavy rainfall days and heavy rainfall intensity from 1961 to 2015,by taking the Hu Huanyong line as the dividing line, has shown a significant spatial distribution pattern of being high in the southeast versus low in the northwest. Linear trend analysis result shows that heavy rainfall amounts and heavy rainfall days show an obvious spatial distribution pattern of 'increasing-decreasing-increasing' from the southeast coast to the northwest inland in China. And the meteorological stations number with increasing trend is dominant, which is up to 80.88% in all the meteorological stations in heavy rainfall amounts and 79.81% in heavy rainfall days. The decadal profile analysis result shows that heavy rainfall amounts and heavy rainfall days are increasing rapidly with time from the northwest to the southeast coast in China. The EOF analysis of heavy rainfall after being low-pass filtered shows that heavy rainfall amounts and heavy rainfall days are increasing fast in southeast coastal regions but slowly in inland areas in China. According to the IPCC and other existing research, 28 climatic indices influencing heavy rainfall in China are selected. And the correlation analysis between the 659 meteorological stations and the 28 climatic factors are carried out. The results show that the correlation between different climatic indices and different region's heavy rainfall has significantly intricate features. The climatic indices with the heavy rainfall mainly showing positive and negative correlation are 15 and 13 respectively. Factors have global impact on heavy rainfall in China including AAO and Pacific Warm Pool, while other climate indices associated with heavy rainfall in the seven geographical regions in China prominent exhibit spatial heterogeneity.