Two separated components, vitrinite and barkinite, and one associated coal sample obtained from South China were studied by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (C-13 NMR) with curve-fitting analysis to obtain information on the concentrations of several functionalities in the samples. These two components were also studied in situ in coal by micro-FTIR Some parameters derived from FTIR, micro-FTIR, and C-13 NMR were selected to obtain a better understanding of the chemical structure of barkinite. All the FTIR and C-13 NMR spectra and the values of I-1 and I-2 show that the most distinct structural feature of barkinite is a rich concentration of aliphatic structures. Furthermore, the aliphatic structures are longer and less branched. Oxygen is mainly bound to aliphatic carbon. For barkinite, the ratio of integrated areas of 3000-2700 cm(-1) and 3100-3000 cm(-1) regions of FTIR spectra suggest: that its aliphatic hydrogen concentration is larger than its aromatic hydrogen concentration. In the aromatic structures, barkinite has a higher ratio of integrated areas of 900-700 cm(-1) to 1600 cm(-1) than vitrinite, and the aromatic ring number per cluster is mainly 2 or 3. In addition, the intensity of the aliphatic peaks relative to the aromatic peaks (the A factor) of barkinite shows that barkinite can be inferred to be a type I kerogen and that barkinite has good hydrocarbon-generating potential.