Extreme summer precipitation often associated with flash floods has devastating impact on the local economies and livelihood of millions of people over East China. Tracking down the drivers of those extreme events will help to understand their formation mechanisms and to improve forecasts. Here the synoptic patterns associated with summer extreme precipitation events over East China during 1961–2018 have been identified systematically and quantitatively using a circulation clustering method. The results show that regional events over East China are dominated by the Eastern Asian summer monsoon associated Meiyu front, landfalling tropical cyclones and low‐pressure vortices. Most sub‐regions have seen increasing trends of extreme rainfall events during the past 6 decades with comparable contributions from the two main drivers. There was a decreasing trend over the North China Plain driven by the low‐level southeasterly winds.