Chongqing is the largest and most populous of the People's Republic of China's four provincial-level municipalities, and the only one in the less densely populated western region of China. The population of the urban area of Chongqing proper was 5.09 million (2000) and the municipality of Chongqing has a registered population of 31,442,300 (2005).

Chongqing is said to be the semi-mythical State of Ba that the Ba people supposedly established during the eleventh century BCE. By 316 BCE, however, it had been overrun by the State of Qin. The Qin emperor ordered a new city to be constructed. It received its current name in 1189, after Prince Zhao Dun of the Southern Song Dynasty described his crowning as king and then Emperor Guangzong as a "double/repeated happy celebration".

On 14 March 1997, the Eighth National People's Congress decided to merge the city with the neighbouring Fuling, Wanxian, and Qianjiang prefecture-level districts that it had governed on behalf of the province since September 1996. The resulting single division was the Chongqing Municipality, containing over 30,000,000 people in forty-three former counties. The municipality became the spearhead of China's effort to develop its western regions and coordinate the resettlement of residents from the reservoir areas of the Three Gorges Dam project. The boundaries of Chongqing municipality reach much further into the city's hinterland than the boundaries of the other three provincial level municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin), and much of the municipality, which spans over 80 000 km², is rural.

Many factories and universities were moved from eastern China to Chongqing during WWII, transforming this city from inland port to a heavily industrialized city. Chongqing was made into its own municipality in 1997 to jumpstart its development and subsequently China's relatively poorer western areas. Chongqing has been rapidly modernizing for a decade and is now a significant industrial area in western China. Chongqing is, by some measures, the world's largest city and is the world's fastest growing metropolis. In a single day, new construction added approximately 137,000 square meters (approx. 1.5 million square feet) of usable floor space to satisfy demands for residential, commercial and factory space. Every day, migrants added to the local population more than 1,300 people and the local economy grew by almost ¥100 million ($12 million USD).

Chongqing's industries have greatly diversified now but unlike eastern China, its export sector is small due to its inland location. Instead, factories producing local-oriented consumer goods such as processed food, autos, chemicals, textiles, machinery, and electronics are common.

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