It supports the findings of previous study in Holland where schizophrenia risk was doubled among children conceived during war-related food shortages in 1944-1945.
In the China study, the team from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University compared the rates of schizophrenia among those born before, during and after the famine years in the Wuhu region, which currently has a population of 62 million.
During the famine, the birth rate for the area decreased by around 80%.
However, among the babies that were born, more went on to develop schizophrenia as adults than the babies born during non-famine years.
Based on the trends found they believe the critical time of famine is during the first three months of pregnancy.
Alternatively, it might be that certain essential nutrients were missing from the pregnant women's diets, causing harm to the baby, similar to the way that folic acid deficiency can lead to neural tube defects in unborn children.
Another possibility is that during the famine the mothers ate more food substitutes that could have been toxic to the baby.
For example, in China the women ate tree bark and green algae grown at home in vats of urine.
It is also possible that women carrying genes for schizophrenia were more likely to conceive and have successful pregnancies than other women, at a time when the birth rate was going down due to famine.
Paul Corry from the mental health charity Rethink said: "Good nutrition is central to good physical and mental health.
"While we welcome any new research or progress into understanding the causes of schizophrenia it would need to be checked before it would make a difference to the thousands of people living with severe mental illness in the UK.