Abstract: As the farmers have difficulties in financing from the formal financial institutions, the informal finance plays an important supplementary role. The positive and negative impacts of informal finance on the rural economic development were analyzed in this paper. Then, an empirical analysis on the relation between the informal finance and the rural economic development was conducted by using the relevant data from 2000 to 2014 in China. The results showed that the informal finance had a role in promoting the rural economic growth. Finally, the countermeasures were put forward to improve the development of rural informal finance.