Xiangtan is located in Central Hunan and in middle and lower reaches of Xiangjiang River, with a total area of 5,015 square kilometers, a population of 2.92 million. Xiangtan is the important industrial base of machinery manufacturing in China with GDP of USD $77 billion. Up to the end of 2008, the direct foreign investment had been implemented with a total capital of USD 22 billion. Xiangtan has attracted many famous global companies such as Samsung, GE, UMC, Timken, Elite, etc. in the city.

The central government has long been recognizing the economical imbalance between coastal and in-land regions and determined that placing its focus on in-land regions was vital to the health of national economy and stability. In 2007, the central government designated the city cluster: Changsha, Zhuzhou, and Xiangtan (ChangZhuTan) with population over 13 million and GDP over USD $414 billion as a national level economic special zone (ESZ) to promote economical growth in the in-land region. The goal is to leverage the ESZ’s effect on the neighboring regions to ease the geographical imbalance. The government enhances the attractiveness by providing above normal incentives for foreign and domestic companies interested in capturing in-land Chinese market.

Xiangtan enjoys a rich human resource, including about 300,000 industrial workers, and a galaxy of professional talents from many famous comprehensive universities such as Xiangtan University, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Hunan Institute of engineering, and vocational institutions such as Xiangtan Vocational Technical College, and so on. The city cluster has 59 colleges and 900,000 professional (high-education) workers.

Xiangtan enjoys a superb logistics advantage: Jingzhu Expressway, Hukun Expressway and Changtan Expressway, Jingguang Railway and Xiangqian Railway run through the city, and there is also the Port of Xiangjiang River allowing the passage of ships at thousand tonnage level all year round.

In 2005, Xiangtan was ranked the third place in the top 20 cities that are the most suitable to establish factories in China by the magazine Forbes. It has been regularly praised as "China Excellent Tourist City", "Top City for Doing Business" and "China Top 10 Cities to Live".