Based on the synoptic environment analysis of about 100 severe convection cases in China since 2000 and the reference of related literatures, from the perspectives of the three essential conditions for the development of severe convection, namely the thermal instability, lift and moisture, five basic synoptic situation configurations of severe convection in China are proposed and expounded. They are cold advection forcing category, warm advection forcing category, baroclinic frontogenesis category, quasi barotropic category and elevated thunderstorm category. The typical characteristics of the upper cold advection forcing category is that the mid upper strong cold advection above 500 hPa strengthens and reaches the boundary warm convergence zone. The warm advection forcing category is characterized by trough with special structure moving over low level strong warm and moist advection. The deep convection produced by the mid lower layer convergence of cold and warm air features the baroclinic frontogenesis category. The quasi barotropic category mostly occurs at the northern and the southern edges or the interior of summer subtropical high and the area with weak baroclinicity, where the dynamic forcing and the surface inhomogeneous local heating play major roles. The features of elevated thunderstorms are the southwest jet in 700-500 hPa lifted by boundary cold wedge and the instable energy is from above 700 hPa. The classification based on the difference of the formation mechanisms can grasp accurately the synoptic characteristics, the situation configurations, the dynamic and thermal properties and the key points in analyzing short term potential forecast, providing more technical support to further enhance the level of weather prediction.