The city is the capital and the largest city of Jilin province and is located in the interior of Northeast China, deep in the Songliao Plain. It has four distinct seasons and a monsoon-influenced, humid continental climate and has plains and plateaus.

It is a big city with six districts and four neighboring counties. It is considered a land of honey and milk thanks to its large amount of mineral resources, coal, and oil. Changchun has long been a transport hub for Northeast Asia, and, along with the city of Jilin, influences a lot of Northeast China, the Tumen River region and Northeast Asia as well.

It also sits in one of world's three major corn belts (in Northeast China, America and Ukraine) so it is a significant commodity grain base. It is also an important industrial base with a focus on the automotive sector and has attracted Volkswagen, Toyota, Mazda, General Motors and other top automobile and automotive parts companies.

In fact, it had China's first automobile factory, giving it the nickname, "China's Detroit"and is the home of China's classic car brand, Jiefang. As a technological but also cultural city, Changchun has been the home of China's photo-electronics technology, biological technology and applied chemistry development and it has branches of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jilin University, Northeast Normal University and other famous institutions.

Changchun was also the capital of "Manchukuo", the puppet state established by Japan, in Northeast China, 1931 - 45, so it contains many significant historical buildings. And it is the cradle of China's movie industry, with the Changchun Film Studio which has made a lot of good movies and trained a large number of movie professionals.