Objective To investigate the prevalence and related factors of diabetic retinopathy (DR) among residents with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Culai Town of Tai'an City in Shandong Province. Methods According to the DM management file database for community, 785 patients with T2DM were randomly selected by cluster sampling method. The questionnaires, routine general examinations, visual and fundus-free fluoroscopy were performed on all the patients. DR diagnosis and classification was according to the guidelines for clinical diagnosis and treatment of DR in China (2014). Both monocular and binocular DR were selected as DR patients, and the worse eye for binocular DR were treated as the DR classification of the patient. The patients were grouped by presence or absence of DR. GraphPad Prism 6, SigmaPlot 12.5, SPSS 20.0 and Excel were used to achieve data analysis. Also, SPSS 20.0 was used for multi-factor logistic regression analysis. Results A total of 699 patients (89.04%) were actually recorded. There were 122 eyes of 63 patients (9.01%) with DR (DR group), 1272 eyes of 636 patients (90.99%) without DR (NDR group). Among the 122 eyes of DR, there were 19 (15.57%), 17 (13.93%), 70 (57.38%), 10 (8.20%), 6 (4.92%) eyes in stage Ⅰ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ, Ⅳ, Ⅴ, respectively. The differences of mean age (t=15 290, P=0.002), DM duration (t=9075, P＜0.000) and diastolic blood pressure (t=15 810, P=0.006) between the two groups were statistically significant. There were 23 (36.51%) and 394 (61.95%) patients with hypertension history in the DR group and the NDR group, with the significant difference ( χ2=15.42, OR=0.35, 95%CI 0.21-0.60). There were 57 (90.48%) and 500 (78.62%) patients with fasting blood glucose larger than 6.11 mmol/L in the DR group and the NDR group, with the significant difference (OR=2.51, 95%CI 1.06-5.95, P=0.031). Logistic regression analysis showed that the age, fasting blood glucose and DM duration were influencing factors for DR (OR=1.039, 0.864, 0.898; P=0.021, ＜0.000, ＜0.000). Conclusion The prevalence of DR in patients with T2DM in Culai Town of Tai'an City is 9.01%. Age, DM duration, fasting blood glucose are associated to DR. Those with a history of hypertension may have a lower risk of DR than those without a history of hypertension.