Abstract: How the nature of control rights affects audit pricing is an issue which has drawn extensive attention of domestic accounting theory circle and practice circle. The relation between the nature of control rights, auditor industry specialization and audit pricing was studied by using panel data of listed companies in China for the period from 2012 to 2014. The study results showed that ultimate controllers which were state-owned listed companies paid less audit fees than non-state-owned companies, while auditors with industry specialization charged higher audit fees than auditors without industry specialization. A further grouping study showed that the auditor industry specialization in state-controlled listed companies measured by market shares had a positive correlation with audit pricing, while the auditor industry specialization measured by the number of customers had a non-significant correlation with audit pricing; auditor industry specialization in non-state-controlled listed companies measured by each of the two methods had a positive correlation with audit pricing. The conclusions of this paper are of significance to guiding auditors to make audit pricing decisions in consideration of control-related risks and to purposefully develop industry specialization.