Abstract: Southern China is an important agricultural planting region of China, but the seasonal drought severely impacted the regional agricultural production. Based on the 1981-2007  meteorological data from 13 typical meteorological stations in the seasonal drought areas in southern China and the data of related crops growth period and yield, three precipitation year types (drought year, normal year, and wet year) were classified based on the yearly precipitation, and by using five indices (coupling degree of water requirement and precipitation during crop water critical stages, meteorological crop yield, output value per unit area, and water use efficiency and precipitation during whole growth period), the comprehensive benefit of all possible cropping patterns in each typical region was evaluated, and the optimal cropping patterns in the different regions of southern China in different precipitation years were obtained. In the semiarid region, the optimal cropping patterns in dry year included potatomaizesweet potato and winter wheatricesweet potato. In the semihumid region and during dry year, winter wheatricesweet potato was the best choice, and rape seedricesweet potato was the second one. In the warm and humid region (the typical region where seasonal drought happened), the best cropping pattern in Jiangnan area in different precipitation years was potatodouble cropping rice, and the suitable patterns in southwest area were the triple cropping systems with droughtresistant crops, such as winter wheatricesweet potato, winter wheatmaizesweet potato, and potato-double cropping rice. From the aspect of maximally utilizing water and heat resources, triple cropping would be the best choice, with the rice and upland crop rotation as the main and with the rice arranged in pairs in wet year.