Background Advances in treatment have greatly reduced the risk of blindness from this disease, but because diabetes is so common, diabetic retinopathy remains an important problem. The purpose of this study is to investigate the risk factors of diabetic retinopathy (DR) in Chinese type 2 diabetic patients.Methods Totally 746 type 2 diabetic patients were selected for biochemical and clinical characteristics test and examined by the retina-camera for diabetic retinopathy and the average age was 55.9 years old.Results A total of 526 patients was classified as non-DR, 159 patients as non-proliferative-DR and 61 patients as proliferative-DR. Duration of diabetes [(66.09±72.51) months vs (143.71 ±93.27) months vs (174.30±81.91)months, P=0.00], systolic blood pressure [(131.95±47.20) mmHg vs (138.71 ±21.36) mmHg vs (147.58±24.10)mmHg, P=0.01], urine albumin [(32.79± 122.29) mg/L vs (190.96±455.65) mg/L vs (362.00±552.51) mg/L,P=0.00], glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) [(8.68 ± 2.26)% vs (9.42±1.84)% vs (9.42±1.96)%, P=0.04],C-reactive protein (CRP) [(3.19±7.37) mg/L vs (6.36± 23.59) mg/L vs (3.02±4.34) mg/L, P=0.03],high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) [(1.23±0.37) mmol/L vs (1.33±0.35) mmol/L vs (1.24±0.33)mmol/L, P=0.01], uric acid (UA) [(288.51 ±90.85) mmol/L vs (300.29±101.98) mmol/L vs (337.57±115.09)mmol/L, P=0.00], creatinine (CREA) [(84.22±16.31) μmol/L vs (89.35±27.45) μmol/L vs (103.28±48.64)μmol/L, P=0.00], blood urine nitrogen (BUN) [(5.62± 1.62) mmol/L vs (6.55±2.74) mmol/L vs (8.11±3.60)mmol/L, P=0.00] were statistically different among the three groups. Logistic regression analysis showed that diabetic duration and urine albumin were two independent risk factors of DR (the OR values were 1.010 and 1.003 respectively).Conclusions Diabetic duration and urine albumin are two independent risk factors of diabetic retinopathy in elderly type 2 diabetic patients.