Changzhutan in the context of "Changsha"

Statistically, China does not have a simple concept of metropolitan areas. In the country's long-term development plan, China's regional economic layout and planning include large areas such as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Bohai Economic Rim; smaller areas include the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle, the Wuhan Metropolitan Area, and the Greater Changsha Metropolitan Region. Even smaller areas include the Shanghai Pudong New Area,Tianjin Binhai New Area, Sichuan Tianfu New Area, Chongqing Liangjiang New Area, Hunan Xiangjiang New Area, Shaanxi Xixian New Area, Guangzhou Nansha New Area, and Hebei Xiong'an New Area. This is an industrial layout and national long-term development plan formed after decades of industrialization. However, only administrative divisions above the county level regularly publish social and economic development indicators.

As one of the types of administrative divisions in China, cities includes three categories: municipalities, prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities. In addition, China's two special administrative regions are highly commercialized and densely populated areas in the world. Both the international and Chinese governments classify them as cities. In terms of area, prefecture-level cities and municipalities are comparable, and the population and economic sizes are not much different, belonging to the same order of magnitude. There are no county-level cities in municipalities, which is the biggest difference between municipalities and prefecture-level cities in administrative divisions. Mostly, a China's county-level city has all been reformed and developed from a county as a whole, but the development focus, policies authorized by the central and provincial governments, and authorized development plan are different from that of a county. Based on this, this entry only includes China's prefecture-level cities, municipalities and special administrative regions. If you want to fully understand the economic level of prefecture-level administrative regions, you must refer to list of prefecture-level divisions of China by GDP.

Zhuzhou (Chinese: 株洲; pinyin: Zhūzhōu, joo-joh), formerly Jianning (建宁), is a prefecture-level city of Hunan Province, China, straddling the Xiang River southeast of the provincial capital, Changsha, and bordering Jiangxi province to the east. It is part of the "Greater Changsha Metropolitan Region, also known as Changzhutan Golden Triangle" (comprising the cities of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan). The city has jurisdiction over five counties (Yanling, Chaling, Youxian, Liling, Zhuzhou) and four districts (Hetang, Lusong, Shifeng and Tianyuan, a high-tech industrial development zone), and covers an area of 11,420 km (4,410 sq mi).

As of the 2022 census, Zhuzhou had 3,871,100 inhabitants, of whom 1,055,373 lived in the built-up area (4 urban districts). With Xiangtan areas adjoining Zhuzhou due to be agglomerated in a few years' time, the joint built-up area will be home to 2,933,069 inhabitants.Zhuzhou is located in a subtropical monsoon climate zone and with its abundant mineral and organic resources has one of the highest agricultural yields in Hunan province. Zhuzhou is home to a provincial public university of Hunan University of Technology.

Xiangtan (Chinese: 湘潭) is a prefecture-level city in east-central Hunan province, south-central China. The hometowns of several founding leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, including Chairman Mao Zedong, President Liu Shaoqi, and Marshal Peng Dehuai, are in Xiangtan's administration, as well as the hometowns of Qing dynasty and republic era painter Qi Baishi, scholar-general Zeng Guofan, and tennis player Peng Shuai.

Xiangtan forms a part of the Greater Changsha Metropolitan Region with Changsha as the core city along with Zhuzhou, also known as Changzhutan City Cluster, one of the core cities in Central China.