Sichuan neighbors Qinghai and Gansu to the north, Shaanxi and Chongqing to the east, Guizhou and Yunnan to the south, and Tibet to the west.

It was one of the last mainland areas captured by the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Civil War, and was divided into four parts from 1949 to 1952, with Chongqing restored two years later.

The Sichuan Basin and adjacent areas of the Yangtze watershed were a cradle of indigenous civilizations dating back to at least the 15th century BC, coinciding with the Shang in northern China.

Ba stretched into Sichuan from the Han Valley in Shaanxi and Hubei down the Jialing River as far as its confluence with the Yangtze at Chongqing.

[25] This site, believed to be an ancient city of Shu, was initially discovered by a local farmer in 1929 who found jade and stone artifacts.

Excavations by archeologists yielded few significant finds until 1986 when two major sacrificial pits were found with spectacular bronze items as well as artifacts in jade, gold, earthenware, and stone.

[citation needed] The rulers of the expansionist state of Qin, based in present-day Gansu and Shaanxi, were the first strategists to realize that the area's military importance matched its commercial and agricultural significance.

Since the Yangtze flows through the basin and then through the perilous Three Gorges to eastern and southern China, Sichuan was a staging area for amphibious military forces and a haven for political refugees.

This innovative hydraulic system was composed of movable weirs which could be adjusted for high or low water flow according to the season, to either provide irrigation or prevent floods.

Following the declining central government of the Han dynasty in the second century, the Sichuan basin, surrounded by mountains and easily defensible, became a popular place for upstart generals to found kingdoms that challenged the authority of Yangtze Valley emperors over China.

Allegedly there were a million pieces of unspecified types of skeleton bones belonging to war animals and both Song and Yuan soldiers who perished in the fighting over the city, although the figure may have been grossly exaggerated.

[47] In the early 20th century, the newly founded Republic of China established the Chuanbian Special Administrative District (川邊特別行政區) on the province's territories to the west of the Sichuan Basin.

The Special District later became the province of Xikang, incorporating the areas inhabited by Yi, Tibetan, and Qiang ethnic minorities to its west, and eastern part of today's Tibet Autonomous Region.

[citation needed] In the 20th century, as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan had all been occupied by the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the capital of the Republic of China had been temporarily relocated to Chongqing, then a major city in Sichuan.

An enduring legacy of this move is those nearby inland provinces, such as Shaanxi, Gansu, and Guizhou, which previously never had modern Western-style universities, began to be developed in this regard.

The Kuomintang general Wang Sheng wanted to stay behind with his troops to continue the anticommunist guerilla war in Sichuan, but was recalled to Taiwan.

The new municipality was formed to spearhead China's effort to economically develop its western provinces, as well as to coordinate the resettlement of residents from the reservoir areas of the Three Gorges Dam project.

[62] The southern part of the province, including Panzhihua and Xichang, has a sunny climate with short, very mild winters and very warm to hot summers.

Sichuan borders Qinghai to the northwest, Gansu to the north, Shaanxi to the northeast, Chongqing to the east, Guizhou to the southeast, Yunnan to the south, and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west.

The plan is hailed by some as China's efforts to shift towards alternative energy sources and to further develop its industrial and commercial bases, but has been denounced for mass resettlement, loss of archeological sites, and ecological damage.

Chengdu Hi-tech Comprehensive Free Trade Zone was established with the approval of the State Council on October 18, 2010, and passed the national acceptance on February 25, 2011.

Chengdu Hi-Tech Comprehensive Free Trade Zone has attracted the top 500 multinational enterprises such as Intel, Foxconn, Texas Instruments, Dell, Morse, and so on.

In 2000, it was open to APEC and has been recognized as a national advanced hi-tech development zone in successive assessment activities held by China's Ministry of Science and Technology.

Thus, significant minorities of Tibetan, Yi, Qiang, and Nakhi people reside in the western portion that is impacted by inclement weather and natural disasters, environmentally fragile, and impoverished.

It is also one of the only eight subnational divisions to ever reach 100 million people (Uttar Pradesh, Russian RSFSR, Maharashtra, Sichuan, Bihar, Shandong, Guangdong, and Punjab).

Beginning from the 9th century BC, Shu (on the Chengdu Plain) and Ba (which had its first capital at Enshi City in Hubei and controlled part of the Han Valley) emerged as cultural and administrative centers where two rival kingdoms were established.

It enjoyed high popularity throughout the regions along the Silk Road, which stimulated an "exoticization" of the embroidery designs during the 1st millennium, with most of the patterns imported from Sogdia and other parts of Central Asia.

[102] According to the Book of Sui, in the year 605 AD, the head of the Sichuan ateliers producing silks in the "western style" was a certain He Chou, a name which betrays his Sogdian origins.

Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, tofu, and seafood.

As of 2022, Sichuan hosts 134 institutions of higher education, ranking first in the Western China region and fifth among all Chinese provinces after Jiangsu, Guangdong, Henan and Shandong.