Changzhou is briefly called Chang. It is one of the 13 sub-provincial cities in Jiangsu Province. Situated to the south of Yangtze River, at the shore of the Taihu Lake and in the central area of the Yangtze River Delta, Changzhou is just a shot away from Shanghai and Nanjing, and joins Suzhou and Wuxi in forming the Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou metropolis rim. Changzhou is one of the birthplaces of national industry and commerce of modern China. It is well-known for its developed economy and concurrent progress of industry and commerce. In 2008, Changzhou’s GDP totaled RMB 220.22 billion, with a per capita GDP of RMB 50,283 against permanent-resident population of 4.407 million.

In today’s Changzhou, agricultural machinery building, electricity transmission and transformation equipment manufacturing, automobile spare part manufacturing, and new-type textile garment industry are becoming the leading industries, driving the development of three newly emerged industries, namely: electronic information, new-type materials, biomedicine and fine chemical-making, and striving for the building of a state-of-the-art manufacturing base which is showing escalating effects of scale and brand. Changzhou is also an important tea production region in the country. The Maoshan Qingfeng Tea, the Maoli Qiqiang Tea, the Fangli Queshe Tea etc. produced in Jintan is well known across China and sell well both domestically and globally. The Maoli Tea field is even designated as the state-level breeding field of high-quality tea-seeds.