Abstract: Objective To investigate the association between polymorphism of transcription factor 7-like 2 (TCF7L2) gene and incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Chinese population.Methods The study on the polymorphism of TCF7L2 and T2DM were retrieved from PubMed, Web of science, Chinese journal full-text database, Wanfang digital journal full-text database and other databases. The search time was until July 2017.The quality of the selected articles was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS) quality evaluation table and stata 12.0 software was used to conduct the meta analysis. The association of genotype, allele with type 2 diabetes was analyzed respectively using OR value as a combination effect index. I² was calculated in order to quantitatively analyze the heterogeneity among the studies. Subgroup analysis was used in order to explore sources of heterogeneity. Sensitivity evaluation, Begg's Test and Egger's Test was used to assess the stability and the publication bias of the results.Results A total of 41 articles were screened(with 16 981 cases of T2DM and 27 334 healthy subjects). The analysis showed that the frequency of CC/CT genotype frequency (OR=1.398, 95% CI:1.072-1.822) or C allele frequency (OR=1.270, 95% CI:1.147-1.407) of rs7901695, the frequency of AA/GA genotypes (OR=1.275, 95% CI:1.126-1.443)or A allele (OR=1.249, 95% CI:1.120-1.393) of rs12255372, and the frequency of TT/CT genotype (OR=1.747, 95% CI:1.364-2.238) or T allele (OR=1.719, 95% CI:1.366-2.164) of rs7903146 had significant difference between the T2DM group and the control group (all P<0.05).Conclusions The findings revealed that the Chinese population with TCF7L2 rs7901695, rs12255372 and rs7903146 gene polymorphism may be susceptible to T2DM.