Nanhua County is under the jurisdiction of Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture. The original name of Zhennan was changed to Nanhua County in 1954, meaning "a beautiful place in the southwest". It is located in the west of Chuxiong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, bordering Mouding County in the east, Chuxiong City in the southeast, Jingdong Yi Autonomous County in the south, Midu County in the west, Xiangyun County and Yao'an County in the north. The county seat is 33 kilometers away from Chuxiong, the provincial capital, 192 kilometers away from Kunming, and 175 kilometers away from Dali. The area is 2343 square kilometers. According to the data of the seventh population census, as of 0:00 on November 1, 2020, the permanent resident population of Nanhua County was 203704.

Nanhua County is one of the key counties of national poverty alleviation and development work, and also one of the 47 old revolutionary base counties in Yunnan during the War of Liberation. On February 2, 2019, it was rated by the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine as an advanced unit in the work of traditional Chinese medicine at the national grass-roots level at the county level. On April 30, 2019, the People's Government of Yunnan Province decided to withdraw Nanhua County from the poverty county sequence.

In 2020, Nanhua County will achieve a GDP of 9.7 billion yuan, up 6.5%. The general public budget revenue was 559 million yuan, up 3.1%; The general public budget expenditure was 2.239 billion yuan, up 2%; Fixed asset investment increased by 23%; The added value of industries above designated size increased by 10.7%; The per capita disposable income of urban and rural permanent residents reached 38759 yuan and 12564 yuan respectively, up 4.5% and 7.8% respectively; The total retail sales of consumer goods reached 4.555 billion yuan, up 3.2%.