Shanghai sprawls across eastern China as a bustling coastal metropolis. It is one of four direct-administered municipalities in the country, holding the same administrative rank as a province and serving as a key driver of China’s modern economy and culture.To get more news about where is shanghai china, you can visit meet-in-shanghai.net official website.

Shanghai sits on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, where the Huangpu River threads through the heart of the city before emptying into the East China Sea. Its geographic coordinates are approximately 31°13′43″ N latitude and 121°28′29″ E longitude1.

Bordered to the north and west by Jiangsu province and to the southwest by Zhejiang province, Shanghai also faces the Bay of Hangzhou to its south. This strategic placement within the Yangtze River Delta has fostered centuries of agricultural and commercial exchange.

As a direct-administered municipality, Shanghai encompasses around 6,341 square kilometers, combining an urban core with suburban districts and rural hinterlands. This area makes it the 33rd largest city by land area in China, even as it leads in population density.

In 2023, Shanghai’s permanent resident population reached about 24.87 million, ranking it as China’s most populous city proper. Its wider metropolitan zone supports nearly 30 million residents, making it one of the world’s largest urban agglomerations.

Perched on a flat alluvial plain, Shanghai averages just 4 meters above sea level, with gentle slopes rising slightly inland. This low-lying, marshy terrain has historically made land reclamation a practical means of urban expansion.

At the core of the Yangtze River Delta, Shanghai lies east of where the Changjiang (Yangtze) and Qiantang rivers meet. This delta region, fed by one of Asia’s great waterways, has been a cradle of dense settlement and vibrant trade for millennia.

Originally a modest fishing village and market town, Shanghai’s fortunes transformed after it opened as a treaty port in 1843 under the Treaty of Nanking. Foreign trading houses and concessions soon turned it into Asia’s preeminent commercial hub in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Today, Shanghai ranks among the globe’s foremost financial centers. It hosts the Shanghai Stock Exchange, boasts the world’s busiest container port, and serves as a nexus for international business, innovation, and manufacturing.

The city’s pivotal role in transport stems from its two international airports—Pudong and Hongqiao—linking it to destinations worldwide, alongside a vast high-speed rail network and one of the longest metro systems on earth. This multimodal connectivity underscores Shanghai’s status as China’s eastern gateway.

Shanghai’s coastal and riverine setting has shaped its cosmopolitan character. Waves of migrants and visitors over two centuries have interwoven diverse cultural threads, embedding Shanghai as both a symbol and engine of China’s engagement with the world.

Whether studied on a map or experienced firsthand, Shanghai’s location at the juncture of two great rivers, sandwiched between Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and flanked by the East China Sea, cements its identity as a dynamic global metropolis at China’s eastern edge.

Shanghai’s humid subtropical climate reflects its maritime position: summers are sultry and rainy under East China Sea influences, while winters are cool yet tempered by the surrounding waterways. This climate pattern underscores the importance of its coastal geography.

Over recent decades, massive land reclamation fueled by Yangtze sediments has extended Shanghai’s shoreline eastward, adding new districts like Pudong. This ongoing reshaping of the delta plain demonstrates how geography continues to drive the city’s growth and evolution.