Climate change has dramatic impacts on the growth and the geographical distribution of tea (Camellia sinensis L.). Assessing the potential distribution of tea will help decision makers to formulate appropriate adaptation measures to use the altered climatic resources and avoid the damage from climate hazards. The objective in this study is to model the current and future distribution of tea species based on the four SSPs scenarios using the MaxEnt model in China. For the modeling procedure, tea growth records in 410 sites and 9 climate variables were used in this paper. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the performance of the model. The AUC value was over 0.9 in this study, showing the excellent simulation result of the model. In relation to the current distribution, areas of 82.01 × 10⁴ km² (8.51% of total land area in China), 115.97 × 10⁴ km² (12.03% of total land area in China), and 67.14 × 10⁴ km² (6.97% of total land area in China) were recognized as Marginal, Medium, and Optimal climate suitable habitats for tea over China. Compared to the current distribution, most of the Optimal suitability areas in southeast China would be lost in four scenarios. The area of Marginal and Medium suitable habitats would expand in SSP370 and SSP585, especially in 2041–2061 and 2081–2100. The suitable area of tea would expand northwards and westwards, suggesting that additional new suitable habitats could be created for tea production with the future climate change, especially in Shandong, Henan, Guizhou, and Yunnan Provinces. This research would provide vital scientific understanding for policy making on tea production, tea garden site chosen and adopyion of adaptation methods in the future.

Tea (Camellia sinensis L.), as one of the most important cash crops in China, plays an important role in increasing farmers’ incomes and guaranteeing a high quality of life. Tea production has been greatly influenced by both climate change and economic development in China. However, without a scientific understanding of the interaction mechanism of climate change and the impetus from rapid economic development on tea production practices in China, it is difficult to take adaptive actions to meet the climate change challenges for the tea industry. In this paper, we firstly assessed the potential impacts of climate change on tea climate suitability by empirical formula calculation using meteorological data; then, the effects from the additional climatic stress due to warming on tea production were detected with the annual statistical tea yield record on a municipal level. The contribution of socioeconomic development to the tea industry was evaluated with the comparison of the movement of China’s national economy’s and tea industry’s gravity center during the period of 1987–2017. Finally, a conceptual adaptation framework was built to demonstrate the interaction mechanisms between climate change, tea production, and the economic development. The results showed that there was a negative impact of climate change on tea production in mainland China, with the percentage of high tea climate suitability (>0.9) areas dropping by 45% to 32%, while opportunities of enlarging the tea cultivating area emerged in the north tea production region where the tea climate suitability increased. We found that the tea planting area expanded northwards from 33° N in 1987 to 35° N in 2017 to take advantage of the favorable climatic resources due to warming, and tea planting decreased at an altitude of 100–400 m while increasing to higher altitude of 400–2000 m to avoid hot temperature damage and seek the optimum environment in high mountainous areas for tea production. In addition, the tea production moved westward along the longitude, decreasing obviously at 117–121° E while increasing significantly at 98–104° E and 107–110° E. Meanwhile, the tea production gravity center showed a westward movement consistent with the national economic gravity center moving trend, which means that tea industry development was driven by multiple socioeconomic factors and climatic forcings. A conceptual framework was built in this paper, aiming to show a robust adaptation mechanism for the tea system to maximize the benefits and minimize the damages from the altered climatic resources under rapid economic development in mainland China. The results in this study would help deepen the understanding of the adaptation process and practices for tea production in mainland China.