Objective To systematically evaluate the prevalence of depression in elderly type 2 diabetes patients in China. Methods This paper retrieved CNKI、WanFangData、CBM、VIP、PubMed、Embase、PsyclNFO and Web of Science to collect cross-sectional studies about the prevalence of depression in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes from inception to Mar 2019.There are two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and evaluated the risk of bias of the included studies. Meta-analysis was performed using Stata 14.0 software. Results A total of 19 studies were included.The analysis results show that the prevalence rate of depression in elderly patients with type 2 diabetes was 41.6%(95%CI:37.6% to 45.6%).The subgroup analysis shows that the prevalence of depression in elderly T2DM patients was not affected by gender, but related to region, source, depression level and survey time.And the depression degree of elderly patients with T2DM was mainly mild and moderate, with an average prevalence of 45.6%(40.7% to 50.5%)in the south,and 36.0%( 31.0% to 41.0%) in the north.The average prevalence in hospitals was 39.4%(37.2% to 41.6%), and the community was 46.8%(44.1% to 49.5%).The prevalence was 35.0% from 1999 to 2004, 47.4% from 2004 to 2009, 40.2% from 2009 to 2014, and 45.2% from 2014 to 2017.It suggests that the prevalence of depression in elderly T2DM patients began to increase significantly from 1999 to 2009, and remains at a high level in the following years. Conclusion The prevalence of depression in elderly T2DM patients in China is relatively high, so early attention should be paid to the occurrence of depression and enhanced psychological intervention in their treatment process.