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 million in 2000 and the municipality of Chongqing has a registered population of over 31,000,000.  

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.

Chongqing has been rapidly modernizing 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. 

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.