On 14 March 1997, the current municipality was separated from the surrounding province of Sichuan, with the goal of furthering development in the central and western parts of the country.

[14] As one of China's National Central Cities, Chongqing serves as a center for finance in the Sichuan Basin and the upstream Yangtze, as well as for manufacturing and transportation.

In 1362 (during the Yuan dynasty), Ming Yuzhen, a peasant rebel leader, established the Daxia Kingdom (大夏) at Chongqing for a short time.

This restriction was abolished by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, which declared the city open on the same terms as other ports, although it was not until 1907 that a steamship made the journey without the help of manual haulers.

[45] On 14 March 1997, the Eighth National People's Congress decided to merge the sub-provincial city with adjacent Fuling, Wanxian, and Qianjiang prefectures that it had governed on behalf of the province since September 1996, and grant it independence from Sichuan.

The municipality became the spearhead of China's effort to develop its western regions and to coordinate the resettlement of residents from the reservoir areas of the Three Gorges Dam project.

[48] Chongqing is located in the subtropics, situated in the transitional area between the Tibetan Plateau and the plain on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze.

The city's "night rain in the Ba Mountains", features in poems throughout Chinese history, including "Written on a Rainy Night—A Letter to the North" by Li Shangyin.

[52] Karst landscape is common in this area, and stone forests, numerous collections of peaks, limestone caves and valleys can be found in many places.

[55] The Zhongliang (中梁山) and Tongluo (铜锣山) mountains roughly form the eastern and western boundaries of Chongqing's urban area.

Known as one of the "Three Furnaces" of the Yangtze River, along with Wuhan and Nanjing, its summers are long and among the hottest and most humid in China, with highs of 34 °C (93 °F) in July and August in the urban area.

[60][61] During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), this special weather possibly played a role in protecting the city from being overrun by the Imperial Japanese Army.

[90] The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 72.32% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, or folk religious sects.

[92]: 298 There has been a massive government push to transform Chongqing into the region's economic, trade, and financial center and use the municipality as a platform to open up the country's western interior to further development.

[99] Even though Chongqing's industries are diversified, unlike eastern China, its export sector is small due to its relatively disadvantageous inland location.

Instead, factories producing local-oriented consumer goods such as processed food, cars, chemicals, textiles, machinery, sports equipment and electronics are common.

[note 4] Chongqing is also planned to be the site of a 10 million ton capacity refinery operated by CNPC (parent company of PetroChina) to process imported crude oil from the Sino-Myanmar pipelines.

As of 2022[update], Chongqing hosts 70 institutions of higher education (excluding adult colleges), making it the fourth city with the most higher education institutions nationwide and the first city in Western China, which comprises Chongqing, six provinces (Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai), and three autonomous regions (Tibet, Ningxia, and Xinjiang), with a combination of more than 290 million population.

Public transport in Chongqing consists of metro, intercity railway, a ubiquitous bus system and the world's largest monorail network.

[134] Traditionally, the road network in Chongqing has been narrow, winding and limited to smaller vehicles because of the natural terrain, large rivers and the huge population demands on the area, especially in the Yuzhong District.

The airport offers a growing network of direct flights to China, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Europe.

It serves domestic routes to most other Chinese cities, as well as international routes to Auckland, New York City, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Doha, Dubai, Seoul, Bangkok, Phuket, Osaka, Singapore, Chiang Mai, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Malé, Bali, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Batam, Rome and Helsinki.

[140] There are also a few speakers of Xiang and Hakka in the municipality, due to the great immigration wave to the Sichuan region (湖廣填川) during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

[143] the air force cemetery in the Nanshan area, in memory of those air force personnel killed during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), and the Red Rock Village Museum, a diplomatic site for the Communist Party in Chongqing led by Zhou Enlai during World War II, and Guiyuan, Cassia Garden, where Mao Zedong signed the "Double 10 (10 October) Peace Agreement" with the Kuomintang in 1945.

Local specialties here include dumplings and pickled vegetables and, different from many other Chinese cuisines, Chongqing dishes are suitable for the solo diner as they are often served in small individual sized portions.

[172] Originally called Qianwei (Vanguard) Wuhan, the club formed in 1995 to take part in the recently developed, fully professional Chinese Soccer League.

They would quickly rise to top tier of the system and experience their greatest achievement in winning the 2000 Chinese FA Cup,[173] and coming in fourth within the league.

[175] Sport venues in Chongqing include: At the end of 2020, a collaboration between a Danish architecture firm and a Chinese tech company Terminus was announced, taking the form of an AI-controlled campus.

The project is named Cloud Valley and aims to use sensors and WiFi-controlled devices to collect data on the city's residents and atmosphere, including weather and eating and sleeping habits.

5The claimed province of Taiwan no longer have any internal division announced by Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC, due to lack of actual jurisdiction.