Located in central and north Taicang, Shaxi town, covering an area of 126.7 square kilometers, consists of 20 villager committees and eight neighborhood committees with a permanent resident population of 85,000 and a floating population of about 68,000. It is a pilot town of Jiangsu province that is carrying out a policy of giving strong towns more power.

In 2012, it generated a regional GDP of 11.5 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) and fiscal revenue of 1.01 billion yuan, including 437 million yuan in general budgetary revenue. Its total industrial output value reached 32.07 billion yuan, and total investment in fixed assets reached 3.76 billion yuan. The three parks for emerging industries, namely the Bio-Medical Industrial Park, Taiwan-funded Technological Innovation Industrial Park and the Industrial Park of New Materials, have been further improved. The biomedical industrial park has been listed as a provincial-level technological park.

With increasing independent innovation capability, Shaxi town has been awarded the honor of “Innovative Town” by the Jiangsu provincial government. Shaxi town has been included in China’s Tentative List for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites.