Qingyuan City, prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Guangdong Province, is located in the north-central part of Guangdong Province, in the middle and lower reaches of the Beijiang River, and on the southern side of the Nanling Mountain Range in conjunction with the Pearl River Delta. As of the end of 2021, Qingyuan had a total land area of 19,000 square kilometers, accounting for about 10.6% of the province's total land area; it has two counties, two autonomous counties, two municipal districts, and two county-level cities under its jurisdiction; and at the end of 2022, it had a household population of 4,535,500 people.
Qingyuan was part of the Baiyue (Guangdong) region during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. In the Han Dynasty, five counties, including Guiyang and Zhongshu, were established; in the sixth year of the Liang Dynasty (507), Qingyuan County was set up, from which the name of Qingyuan originated. Qingyuan is a city in the Guangzhou metropolitan area. As early as in the Neolithic Age, there were ancestors living in this land, creating a brilliant prehistoric civilization; Qingyuan is also one of the major ethnic minority settlements in Guangdong Province. Qingyuan is an important part of the regional plate of Guangfu culture. Guangfu culture is the mainstream of Qingyuan culture, and Qingyuan has a profound relationship with the Guangfu cultural circle in terms of history, geography and ethnic groups. Qingyuan is close to Guangzhou, and Guangzhou's cooperation in helping Qingyuan and building the Guangzhou (Qingyuan) Industrial Park is an important manifestation of the "Guangzhou-Qingyuan Integration". 2023, Qingyuan was rated as a third-tier city. Qingyuan has witnessed the emergence of He Dan (何丹), a doctor of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Zhan (刘瞻), who was a prime minister twice in the Tang Dynasty, and Meng Binyu (孟宾于), a poet of the Southern Tang Dynasty. Qingyuan's cliff stone carvings are of high quantity and quality, as early as the Tang Dynasty and as late as the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with a wide range of contents and colorful calligraphy, among which there are inscriptions by celebrities such as Han Yu, Zhou Dunyi, Su Shi and Daben.
In 2023, the gross regional product of Qingyuan City was RMB 212.019 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 4.5%. Among them, the added value of the primary industry was 34.305 billion yuan, an increase of 5.9% year-on-year; the added value of the secondary industry was 80.903 billion yuan, an increase of 5.6% year-on-year; and the added value of the tertiary industry was 96.812 billion yuan, an increase of 3.0% year-on-year.
