Effective agricultural adaptation to climate change needs two pieces of information, the climatic risks posed on crop growth, and yield responses to the risks and associated mechanisms. Assessing the sensitivity and vulnerability of crop production to observed climate change is able to produce such information, facilitates the investment of the limited adaptation resources. Use the relationships between changes in rice yield and climatic variables and their spatial variations, we identified the sensitivity and vulnerability of China's rice production to observed climate change (1981-2007). The growing-season mean climatic variables exhibited significant changes during 1961-2007, indicating the possible climatic risks for rice growth. The increase in day time temperature was most widespread and obvious, suggesting increased risks of heat stresses. The relationships between rice yield and the climatic variables were significant in some rice areas, with the largest percent of the rice area showed yield sensitivity to changes in diurnal temperature range. With a 1℃ warming in growing-season temperature, 1 ℃ increase in diurnal temperature range, and a 10% decrease in radiation, much of the rice areas showed depressed yield to these changes. The area with yield vulnerability was largest to the change in radiation, and second largest to the change in diurnal temperature range. The combined effects of the observed trends of the three climatic variables caused significant change in roughly 30% of the rice areas, but with a small portion showed yield vulnerability. In addition, the negative effects were not pronounced in the principal rice areas, such as Yangtze River Basin, especially in northeast China, the observed climatic trends substantially increased rice yield during the past decades.