Zhoushan is a prefecture-level "city" in northeastern Zhejiang Province in eastern China. It consists of an archipelago of islands at the southern mouth of Hangzhou Bay, off Ningbo. The Zhoushan Archipelago, comprising 1,390 islands and 3,306 reefs, is the largest archipelago of China. Among these islands, 103 are inhabited all year round, 58 are larger than one square kilometer, and only 12 have populations over 10,000. In 2011 the central government approved Zhoushan as Zhoushan Archipelago New Area, a state-level new area.

According to the historical relics discovered, human beings have already dwelled here as early as 5,000 years ago. During the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC), it was well known as the place where one of the three celestial islands locates. Some explorers visited the island seeking for a longevity drug. Administrative unit began to be established here in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

Zhoushan, which proudly boasts two national level key scenic areas (Mount Putuo and Shengsi Islands) and two provincial level key scenic areas (Taohua Island and Daishan), is always praised to be the "backyard garden" of Yangtze River Delta. Beside these scenic areas, Zhoushan has an abundance of points of interest, landscape forms and tourism resources, many of which are still under development, due to its rich historic and natural endowment. Conveniently connected to the continental part of the delta, Zhoushan attracted 27.71 million visitors (which is approximately 25 times its population), 310.5 thousand of whom were from abroad, in 2012 alone. Tourism and its related services have risen to be a very important sector of the municipal economy with a total tourism revenue of 26.68 billion yuan, according to the 2012 statistic.

Traditionally Zhoushan had relied heavily on the primary industry, especially fishing, given Zhoushan is the largest fishery in China. Nowadays with the development of the secondary and tertiary industries, Zhoushan's economic base has been largely diversified. Ship building and repairing, shipping, light industry, tourism and service industry grow to be the major contributors of local economic output. In 2016, the entire municipality achieved a total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 122.85 billion yuan (approximately 16,013 US dollars per capita), with an increase of 11.3% from the previous year.[13] The city continuously ranked 3rd among 11 municipalities of Zhejiang Province. However, since Zhoushan has a significantly smaller population compared with other municipalities, the absolute figure of total GDP still ranked the last place in the province. The structure of three sectors of industry is 10.6 : 39.8 : 49.6. In 2012, Zhoushan Port alone processed 290,990 kilotons of cargo. If combined with Ningbo Port (Ningbo and Zhoushan Ports are essentially one port with shared infrastructure, harbor basin and administrative collaboration), the entire greater port handled approximately 744,000 kilotons of cargo, surpassing Shanghai Port to be world's new busiest port in terms of cargo tonnage.