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Our understanding on the impact of climate change on agricultural production, as well as the potential adaption options, can be accelerated by shedding insights on the historical experiences in the past few decades. Here, we used improved datasets of climate, crop phenology, and crop yields to investigate climate-crop yield relationships, recent trends in seasonal climate and their impact on yields of major crops (i.e., rice, wheat, maize, and soybean) by county throughout China during the period of 1980-2008. The temporal and spatial patterns of climate trends and the impact on major crop yields were presented. We found crop yields declined by up to 5-10 % or more for each 1 degrees C increase in mean temperature over crop growing period at some regions, and trends in mean temperature during the period of 1980-2008 reduced crop yields by up to 2.5-5.0 % or more at some regions. For the whole country, planting area-weighted average of yield change due to trends in mean temperature and precipitation together was about 1.16, -0.31, -0.40, and 0.11 % over the whole period for rice, wheat, maize, and soybean, respectively. Climate trends were large enough at some regions to offset a notable portion of the increases in average yields that arose from technology and other factors. The particular crops and regions that have been most affected and should be the priorities to adapt are maize and wheat in the arid and semi-arid areas of northern and northeastern China, where climate warming-induced droughts are one of major challenges.