The rural industry has become increasingly important in regional economic development of China. However, there is a great geographic diversity in the performance and the development patterns of this sector. According to the theory of interaction of system and its environment, the patterns of rural industrial development could be classified by the dominant exogenous conditions and the internal structures of rural industry and rural elites. So in the light of initial dominant environmental conditions, this paper divided the patterns into the following six fundamental types: Agricultural products processing, Mine resources expolitation and processing, Urban radiation, Human capital, Foreign trade and capital and Market processing. Although the environmental conditions are important for the initial development of rural industry, because the structures of rural industry in an area are the results of selection by local rural elites under the given environment, there are different behavior characteristics of power elites and economic elites in fostering a particular pattern, two sub types in every pattern, fostered by rural power elites and by rural economic elites, could be divided. Consequently, the patterns of rural industrial development in China could be divided into six basic types and twelve sub types. At last, this paper respectively investigated the main forming conditions and the principal features of each pattern, the sphere of application of every pattern in China’s less developed areas was also discussed.