Climate data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) for the period 1901–2013 are used to investigate the drought response to air temperature change over China on the centennial scale. Drought is observed to have increased evidently across China, except for some regions in eastern China. This increase is much stronger in northern China compared to southern China, especially in Northwest and North China. These change characteristics of drought are closely associated with air temperature change, with the severe droughts in the major drought episodes of the last century generally coinciding with higher temperatures. The significantly increasing trend of drought in China based on observations only appears when considering the effects of air temperature change, which can explain ~49% of droughts in observations and 30%–65% of droughts in CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) model simulations. Furthermore, the response of drought to air temperature change generally increases as the drought time scale increases. Furthermore, drought shows relatively high sensitivity in spring and early summer in China on the centennial scale.