The purpose was to explore the effects of resting heart rate (RHR) and pulse pressure (PP) independently as well as their cumulative effects on the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) through cross-sectional study plus meta-analysis. A total of 8276 subjects aged 35-74 years from the Rural Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle (RuralDiab) study were included in the study. Meanwhile, two meta-analyses were conducted to validate the results of the epidemiological research. The results showed that RHR and PP were associated with higher risk of T2DM, and the corresponding adjusted OR(95%CI) for each quartiles were 1.00, 0.99(0.68-1.42), 1.58(1.13-2.20), 2.93(2.15-3.98) and 1.00, 1.06(0.75-1.48), 1.11(0.79-1.56), 1.45(1.03-2.03), respectively. The cumulative effect analysis indicated that the adjusted OR(95%CI) in the fast RHR-high PP were 3.36(2.26-4.99), 2.60(1.47-4.59), and 3.60(2.09-6.20) compared with the slow RHR-low PP for total population, male and female, respectively. Meta-analysis showed that the pooled effect values for RHR and PP were 1.94(1.64-2.31) and 1.25(1.04-1.51), respectively. This study demonstrated that elevated RHR and PP are independently associated with the risk of T2DM as well as the influences of conventional confounders, and fast RHR with high PP might cumulatively increase the risk of T2DM. However, the potential clinical application remains to be determined.