It covers an area of 16,641 square kilometres (6,425 sq mi) and as of the 2002 census[update] had a population of 230,000.

Located on one of the main routes of the Silk Road, the old Gucheng (often referred in the European writing of the past as "Ku Ch'eng-tze", Kucheng, Kuchengtze, etc., using Wade-Giles or Postal Romanization systems), was the western terminal for one of the caravan routes across the Gobi Desert.

Owen Lattimore in The Desert Road to Turkestan leaves an account of his travel along this route in 1926-27.

[2] "Under the special circumstances of the caravan trade, camel traffic usually overshoots Hami ["the most easterly point on the arterial cart roads of Chinese Turkestan"], going on all the way to Ku Ch'eng-tze.

In 2009, the Ürümqi–Dzungaria Railway was constructed through the Jiangjun Gobi desert in the northern part of the county.