Karamay City, a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is located in the western part of the Junggar Basin, the central region of the Eurasian Continent - the central region of the Pan-Central Asia region. It is an important national petroleum and petrochemical base, a new industrial city that Xinjiang focuses on building, and a gathering area of the world's petroleum and petrochemical industry. The total area is 7733 square kilometers. According to the data of the seventh population census, as of 0:00 on November 1, 2020, the permanent population of Karamay was 490348.

Karamay means "black oil" in Uighur. Karamay is a city named after oil. Its name comes from a group of natural asphalt hills in the northeast corner of the city - Black Oil Mountain. Karamay is the first large oil field explored and developed after the founding of the People's Republic of China. It was founded in 1958. In 2002, its crude oil output exceeded 10 million tons, becoming the first large oil field in western China with a crude oil output of tens of millions of tons. On December 20, 2011, Karamay won the honorary title of "National Civilized City".

Karamay has many tourist attractions, and the World Ghost City has been selected as "the most beautiful Yadan in China" and "one of the 50 most worthy places for foreigners to visit in China". In 2017, Karamay was selected as the fifth national civilized city. In 2017, China's prefecture-level cities ranked 14th in the overall well-off index. In November 2018, it was selected as the top 100 in China's urban comprehensive well-off index.

In 2019, the city's GDP reached 97.29 billion yuan, an increase of 6.1% over the previous year. In 2020, Karamay City will achieve a GDP of 88.69 billion yuan, an increase of 2.3% over 2019.

In June 2020, it was selected as the first batch of demonstration areas and projects for the construction of a national government under the rule of law by the Central Commission for the Rule of Law.