It is located on the left (northern) shore of the Yangtze River, downstream from Yichang center city.

Zhijiang City has a significant cluster of Taobao villages, rural Chinese villages where the local economy has developed to focus extensively on e-commerce via the Taobao retail shopping platform.

[9]: 279 In October 2005, Zhijiang was in the news because one of the delegates to its (county-level) People's Congress, Lu Banglie (吕邦列), a village-rights activist, was savagely beaten on October 8, 2005 in the village of Taishi (太石), in Yuwotou town, Panyu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong, by unknown persons.

The beating was witnessed by Benjamin Joffe-Walt, correspondent for The Guardian newspaper of the UK, who was himself threatened and believed Lü had been killed.

The beating may have been intended to prevent a similar popular election from taking place in Taishi.