Tropical cyclone extreme rainfall (TCER) causes devastating floods and severe damage in China and it is therefore important to determine its long-term climatological distribution for both disaster prevention and operational forecasting. Based on the tropical cyclone (TC) best-track dataset and TC precipitation data from 1960 to 2019, the spatiotemporal distribution of TCER affecting China is analyzed.Results show that there were large regional differences in the threshold for TCER in China, decreasing from the southeastern coast to the northwest inland. TCER occurred infrequently in northern China but had a high intensity and was highly localized. The frequency and intensity of TCER showed slightly increasing trends over time and was most likely to occur in August (41.0％). Most of the TC precipitation processes with extreme rainfall lasted for four to six days, with TCER mainly occurring on the third to fourth days. TCER with wide areas showed a northwestward prevailing track and a westward prevailing track. Strong TCs are not always accompanied by extreme precipitation while some weak TCs can lead to very extreme rainfall. A total of 64.7％ (35.3％) of the TCER samples occurred when the TC was centered over the land (sea). TCER≥250 mm was located within 3° of the center of the TC. When the center of the TC was located over the sea (land), the extreme rainfall over land was most likely to appear on its northwestern (northeastern) side with a dispersed (concentrated) distribution. TCER has unique climatic characteristics relative to the TC precipitation.