Rainfall erosivity (R-factor) is a crucial natural factor in assessing soil loss by water erosion. Understanding the spatial–temporal variation of R-factor and its driving forces is essential to reduce soil and water loss as well as formulate a regional ecological restoration plan. In this study, the Huaihe River Basin (HRB), a typical climatic transitional zone of eastern China, was selected as the study region. Using daily precipitation data of 36 national standard meteorological stations in the HRB during 1960–2014, the temporal variation and spatial pattern of R-factor were examined. To explore the influence of large-scale atmospheric circulations, three climatic indicators – the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature (SST), the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM), and the Arctic Oscillation (AO) – were analyzed with R-factor by the cross-wavelet transform. Results indicated that: (1) Average annual R-factor was 5339.64 MJ∙mm∙hm⁻²∙h⁻¹ with an insignificantly increasing trend. Summer accounted the most of seasonal R-factor, followed by autumn and spring. Only the winter R-factor presented a significantly increasing trend. (2) The spatial gradient of R-factor decreased from south to north in the HRB. The common high value of R-factor appeared in the Dabie Mountain. In summer, another high value of R-factor mainly concentrated in the coastal of HRB. (3) Climatic indicators had a strong influence on R-factor in this region. The non-stationary feature was reflected by the resonant period between R-factor and climatic indicators. It should be noticed that the winter R-factor is increasing when the positive phase of AO in the long-term period. This study is helpful to understand the variation of rainfall erosivity in the climatic transitional zone of eastern China.