They would quickly rise up to the top tier and experience their greatest achievement of winning the 2000 Chinese FA Cup and coming fourth within the league.
After these achievements they struggled to replicate the same success and experienced their first relegation from the top tier in the 2006 league season.
In the 1995 season, Hubei Qianwei took part in the bottom level (tier-3) China League Two and finished fourth to gain promotion to the second division.
With significant investment coming into the team, they bought several former Chinese international players such as Feng Zhigang and Xu Tao to strengthen the squad.
This was followed by more Chinese internationals such as Jiang Feng and Han Jinming joining the team and ensuring the club stayed up in the tier one at the end of the season.
[7] Chongqing Lifan would then be eligible to enter their first continental competition when they competed in the 2001–02 Asian Cup Winners' Cup and with Edson Tavares as their new manager he would lead the club to a semi-finals position where the club lost 0:2 to Anyang Cheetahs before ending the competition in fourth after losing to Al Sadd by penalty kicks after a 0:0 regular-time draw in a third-place final game.
With no relegation again in the 2005 league season there was no improvement within the team despite the change in management with Ma Lin coming in.
On 26 June 2016, Jiang Lizhang purchased 98.13% of Granada CF,[12] setting up an affiliation, which has seen Feng Jing and Wang Zixiang go to the Spanish club,[13] with Chongqing Lifan.
The oldest of these rivalries was against Sichuan Quanxing, which was formed when the club moved to the neighbouring province of Chongqing and effectively created a local derby.
[15] With both clubs in the top tier representing two neighbouring provinces, a fierce local rivalry would form that reached its peak on 12 November 2003 in a vital league game for both teams to avoid relegation.
[18] For several seasons these two clubs would fight in an intermittent rivalry until Chengdu were dissolved in 2015 after facing financial difficulties.