Dalian is located at the very south of China's Liaodong Peninsula, facing the Yellow Sea in the southeast, the Bohai Sea in the northwest, and backed by the northeastern inland areas. The city has a total area of 12,574 square kilometers, and a regular population of 6.02 million (5.72 million registered residents).In addition, Dalian is located in the heart of the Northeast Asian Economic Zone and the Ring of Bohai Economic Zone, neighbouring Japan, South Korea, North Korea and the Far East region of Russia.
Dalian is an important port, trade, industrial and tourist city in northern China. It has a strong industrial base, a complete range of industrial categories and a strong comprehensive supporting capacity, and has a strong capacity to host the transfer of the world's manufacturing industry. With the gross industrial product ranking among the top in Northeast China, Dalian has formed an industrial system mainly in petrochemicals, shipbuilding, locomotives, large-scale machinery, bearings, and refrigeration and freezing equipment, and many industrial enterprises are the backbone of the same industry in China. It is the main external gateway to Northeast China, with state-level economic and technological development zones, high-tech parks, tourism and recreation zones, as well as the only bonded zone and import and export processing zone in Northeast China. It is a city with a high concentration of foreign trade and foreign-invested enterprises in Northeast China. In 2006, the total export amounted to US$15.655 billion, which was 25.9% higher than that of the previous year, and the total amount of foreign investment introduced was US$22.45 million, which was 124.1% higher than that of the same period of the previous year. There are 11,981 foreign-invested enterprises, of which 83 "Fortune 500 companies" have invested in 178 projects in Dalian. The cumulative amount of foreign investment (signed contracts) has reached 40.513 billion US dollars, and the amount of investment under construction has reached 22.249 billion US dollars.
Dalian has a large number of talents, and the total number of various types of talents has reached 1.32 million, accounting for 21 % of the city's total population. Dalian cultivates more than 2,000 Japanese-speaking talents of all kinds every year, and now the number of talents who can communicate in Japanese has reached 300,000, especially the Japanese-speaking talents in the IT industry, which ranks the first among all major cities in China. Nearly 10,000 foreign experts come to work in Dalian every year. In order to promote cooperation and exchanges with Japanese industries, Dalian attaches great importance to the cultivation of Japanese-speaking talents.
Dalian is the earliest city in China to develop urban informatisation and information industry, with various indices of urban informatisation ranking at the forefront in China, and the information industry has become the pillar industry of Dalian, with its GDP accounting for about 60% of the information industry in the northeast region. Dalian's software industry is very distinctive, with the country's only successful operation of the "government-assisted, privately-run" system of software parks, the country's first and largest privately-run software colleges, and ranked first in the national software exports of software enterprises. It has been successively identified by the state as a national software industry base, a national software export base, a demonstration city for the internationalisation of the software industry, a torch plan industrial park and an international training base for software talents.
Moreover, Dalian concluded friendship city relations with Kitakyushu City in May 1979, Maizuru City in May 1982, and Ivory City in July 1987.Dalian continues to improve its economic and social environment while expanding its areas of international co-operation. Dalian is accelerating the process of building itself into an international shipping center and an international metropolis in Northeast Asia, and is strengthening economic and trade cooperation with Japan as well as cooperation with people from all walks of life to achieve mutual benefits.
