Situated in the center of the Yangtze River Delta, Suzhou is bordering Shanghai to the east, Zhejiang to the south, embracing Taihu Lake towards its west and nestled by the Yangtze River to the north. The riverbank of the Yangtze river stretches 157.96 kilometers in length within the region. The Grand Canal passes through the city from the north to the south while the Shanghai-Nanjing Intercity railways, the Beijing-Shanghai Express railway and the Shanghai-Nanjing Expressway travers from the east to the west.

In 2018, “The Yangtze River Delta Integrated development” was upgraded to a national strategy. Suzhou has taken the tide to initiate and implement the action plan and launched the construction of the demonstration zone of the Yangtze River Delta green and integrated development.

The city covers a total area of 8657.32km2 with rivers, lakes and tidal flats taking up 36.6% of the total area. As a well-known water town in the south of the Yangtze River, its household registered population reaches 7.443 million and the permanent resident population reaches 12.7483 million at the end of 2020. Under Suzhou City there are four county-level cities, including Zhangjiagang, Changshu, Taicang and Kunshan, and six districts, including Wujiang, Wuzhong, Xiangcheng, Gusu, Suzhou Industrial Park and Suzhou Hi-tech Zone (Huqiu District).

Suzhou is nestled in a subtropical monsoon marine climate zone, mild and moist, with four distinctive seasons and adequate rainfall. Its summers and winter are long; springs and autumns are short. Known as a land of fish and rice, famous for its silk for long, the city has earned the fame of “the paradise on earth”, due to all these attributes.

The city has low and flat landforms with dense waterway networks, fertile farmland and rich produces. Suzhou has been farming rice, wheat, rapeseeds, produces cotton, mulberry and fruits; the special local produces contain loquat, citrus, Chinese chestnut, plum, osmanthus flowers, Biluochun tea, etc.. Dao fish from the Yangtze River, hairy crabs from Yangcheng Lake, silver fish, white fish, white shrimps from Taihu Lake are well-known aquatic products.

Suzhou is among the first batch of Chinese cities officially titled “national historical and cultural city” and a key scenic touristic city. The history of the city traces its beginning over 2500 years ago. The city is located on the same site as in the Spring and Autumn period, where He Lv, the king of Wu State had the city built in AD514. Streets and buildings were built alongside both sides of the rivers, the layout of the city looks like a double chessboard, which has been preserved till today. The river network of Suzhou has a "one ring circling three horizontal and vertical rivers" pattern. Bridges crossing rivers, buildings with white walls and black tiles, famous gardens full of historical traces, all of which together give Suzhou a unique, picturesque view.

9 Classical Gardens of Suzhou and the Suzhou section of the Grand Canal are listed into the Directory of World Cultural Heritage Sites. The Kunqu Opera, Chinese Guqin art, Song Brocade, Suzhou tapestry method, traditional architecture construction expertise as called Xiangshan School and the Suzhou Dragon Boat Festival custom are included into the representative list of the UN Directory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

In history, Suzhou had many generations of gifted people and elites. The 51 civil and military principal Scholars in history and 126 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering coming from Suzhou earned the city nickname of “Home to the Principal Scholars” and “Hometown of Academicians” .Since 2020, July 10th has been designated as Suzhou Scientists Day.

The Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong Yangtze River Highway and Railway Bridge and the Shanghai-Suzhou-Nantong Railway were completed and open to traffic；thus ending the history of no railways in Zhangjiagang, Changshu and Taicang. By the end of 2020, the total mileage of road reached 11,700 kilometers. The total operation line of urban rail transit (trams included) amounted to 210.1 kilometers and the operation mileage totaled 22.83 million train kilometers. The total line and network passenger flow reached 30.8583 million. The middle ring expressway is fully connected. The city has built itself to national transit city. 6,345 buses are in operation with 432 routes. 17,500 5G base stations were built, the 1000 KV Dongwu Substation expansion projects and Kunshan ultra-100-megawatt energy storage power station were completed and put into operation.

The total electricity consumption amounted to 152.33 billion kilowatt-hours in 2020. The total water supply capacity of Suzhou reached 7.325 million ton per day. A total of 1.639 billion cubic meters of pipelined natural gas was supplied in urban areas (excluding Wujiang District). The city’s domestic sewage treatment capacity reached 4.1 million ton per day.