Yining City, the capital of the prefecture-level administrative region of Ili Autonomous Prefecture, is located in the northwest border of Xinjiang, the motherland, and in the center of the Ili River Valley basin. The geographical coordinates are between 43 ° 50 ′ - 44 ° 09 ′ N and 80 ° 04 ′ - 81 ° 29 ′ E. It is adjacent to Yining County in the east, Huocheng County in the west, Ili River in the south and Chabuchar Xibo Autonomous County across the river, and Kogurqin Mountain in the north. It is 509 kilometers from Urumqi by air, 614 kilometers by railway and 702 kilometers by road. The highway mileage from the northeast to Tajik City is 830 kilometers, and the highway mileage to Altay City is 989 kilometers. The city center is 639 meters above sea level. The total area of Yining municipal administrative area is 644.01 square kilometers. By the end of 2020, the built-up area is 122 square kilometers, 52.08 kilometers long from north to south, and 35.5 kilometers wide from east to west.

Yining now has five townships, four towns, two fields, and eight sub-district offices, including 37 ethnic groups, including Uygur, Han, Kazak, Hui, Mongolian, Xibe, Uzbek, and Russian.

Yining, known as Ningyuan in ancient times, was founded in 1762. It was one of the nine cities of Ili in the Qing Dynasty. It was officially established with the approval of the State Council in 1952. It is the capital city of the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture and a national historical and cultural city.

In 2010, it was selected as one of the ten livable small and medium-sized cities in China by Southern People Weekly, and has successively won the titles of "China's Excellent Tourism City", "National Garden City", "National Historical and Cultural City", and the National Comprehensive Pilot City of New Urbanization. In December 2016, Yining City was listed as the first batch of national comprehensive pilot areas for new urbanization. In June 2017, Yining was named the National Health City. 2019 Top 100 counties and cities in western China. In 2019, the city's permanent registered residence population at the end of the year was 582744 (excluding the non settled permanent population).

In 2019, Yining achieved a GDP of 27.29 billion yuan, an increase of 6.6% over the previous year. On May 18, 2020, it was selected as one of the top 100 cities (county-level) with the highest popularity in China in 2020.