Dalian belongs to Liaoning province. Liaoning is one of the three northeastern provinces, including Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces in the northeast of China.

Located at the southernmost tip of Liaodong Peninsula in China, Dalian is the gateway of Beijing and Tianjin, bordering Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the northeast of China in the north, facing Shandong Peninsula in China across the sea in the south, and neighboring Japan, South Korea, North Korea and the Russian Far East.