The city of Nantong, situated in central section of China's coastline and on the northern bank of the estuary of the Yangtze River, is one of China's first 14 coastal cities open to the outside world. Facing Shanghai and the South Jiangsu across the Yangtze River to the south, and backed up by the vast Subei plain to the north, Nantong City is linked to railway known as Eurasian Continent Bridge. Waterway connection is readily available to inter-national ports worldwide via the River. Going up-stream along the river, ships can arrive in most areas in the cen-tral and western China. Well positioned to interact with international and domestic economic driving forces, Nan-tong possesses the similar locational advantages as Shanghai. Nantong has a 226-kilometer-long coastline along the Yangtze River and 210-kilometer-long along the Yellow Sea. Nantong has a total land area of 8,001 square kilometers, a neighboring sea area of about 10 thousand square kilometers, and a total population of 7,750,600. The city center area is 381 square kilometers, with a population of 843,800.

Nantong is well recognized as China's first modern city, and home to China's modern national industry. A century ago, Zhuangyuan Zhang Jian, No.1 Imperial Scholar of late Qing Dynasty, came back to his hometown-Nantong to start up several textile mills. His entrepreneurial heritage resulted in a complete industrial system including light industry, textile, machinery, electronics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, building materials, electrical power, ship-building and metallurgical sectors.

As a remarkable place producing outstanding people, Nantong is renowned in China as homes to museums, sports champions, textiles, construction, education and macrobians. Coming into a new century, Nantong pro-motes such a new leap-forward growth strategy as 'relying on the river and sea, leading the Middle Jiangsu devel-opment, catching up with South Jiangsu, integrating with Shanghai, forward to the world and realizing across-the-board well being'. Now the city's economy and society are on the right track for well-rounded, harmonious and sustainable development. In 2005, the Gross domestic products (GDP) reached 147,208 billion RMB, the to-tal import and export volume 8.52 billion dollars, and per capita GDP 19,979 RMB.