Fushun is located on the Hun River. It was originally called Fouchouen in French. The city was occupied by Russia until 1905 and by Japan until 1945. It is one of the industrial and economic development hubs in Liaoning province. Fushun is rich in many types of resources including wood, coal, oil shale, iron, copper, magnesium, gold, marble, titanium, and marl. Hydro-electric and thermal power are also important locally available resources. Fushun is known as "the capital of coal." The main coal and oil shale company is Fushun Mining Group, which produces about 6 million tons of coal per year, mainly blending coking coal and steam coal. The company has also coal-bed methane resources around of 8.9 billion cubic meters. In addition, it owns geological reserve for high grade oil shale about 3.5 billion tons, of which exploitable reserve is 920 million tons.

In more recent times, Fushun was where Lei Feng was stationed as a soldier and died, and a memorial museum telling his life story is a poplar attraction. The memorial museum of Lei Feng is located at Wang Hua District in Fushun. It was also in Fushun that the last emperor, Puyi, was imprisoned after the end of the second world war. The prison building is now converted into a museum. Another war memorial, the Pingdingshan Tragedy Memorial Hall Ruins tells the story of a massacre of Chinese people by the Japanese in 1931. It was rebuilt in 2007 and the size of this memorial was expanded. You can see a pit full of about 800 bodies. All these victims including infants, adults, old people were cruelly killed by Japanese.