OBJECTIVES: To summarize the progress of epidemiology, treatment, and economic burdens of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with nephropathy complications in China. METHODS: A systematic review method was performed to search and refine the evidence of existing English and Chinese researches on T2DM and diabetic nephropathy. Literatures were searched from various databases including Pubmed, Web of science, CNKI, etc. Five inclusion criteria include disease (T2DM and nephropathy), population (Chinese patients), prevalence, treatment procedure, and disease burden. Quality assessment and data extraction were implemented by two reviewers independently and the differences between them were resolved by consensus. RESULTS: Fifty-one articles were included in the review. The results showed that the rising prevalence rate of diabetes in China has reached a high level. The mortality of diabetic nephropathy (DN) has higher proportion of 34% in total mortality of T2DM patients than other DM complications, although the researches related to DN are not yet enough. The western medicine treatment strategies of T2DM with chronic kidney diseases were more instructional, while the treatment with Chinese herbal medicine was based on the principle of ‘syndrome differentiation’, resulting in the difficulty to carry out multicenter clinical researches to evaluate the treatment effect. Diabetes and its complications have brought a heavy burden in China. The total economic burden of DM and its complications reached 247.8 billion RMB in 2007 and varied among different cities and between urban and rural areas. CONCLUSIONS: Evidence of prevalence and disease burden of diabetes was not comprehensive in current researches on Chinese patients, especially for diabetic nephropathy. Information of diabetic complications should be included in the content of cross-sectional diabetes surveys to provide more information of the incidence and prevalence of DN. More intervention researches should be conducted to actively prevent DM and chronic complications such as DN.