Chongqing is a famous cultural city with a history of 3,000 years and a glorious revolutionary tradition. Towards the end of the Old Stone Age approximately 20,000-30,000 years ago, mankind began to live in Chongqing.
Chongqing was originally the capital of the Ba Kingdom over three thousand years. The place was called Jiangzhou during the Western Dynasty. Later on, it was changed into Yuzhou during the Sui, Tang Wudai and Northern Song Dynasties. Before long, the place was renamed once more as Gongzhou for a short period of time. In 1189, Emperor Guangzhong of Southern Song Dynasty was first conferred here on Prince Gong and then ascended the throne. For sake of celebration, he renamed Gongzhou as Chongqing, that means double celebrations. This name remains all the same over the previous eight hundred years.
In the year of 1362, Ming Yuzhen, the leader of a peasant uprising army during the last period of the Yuan Dynasty, established the peasant regime of Daxia Kingdom and assigned the city as its political center. In 1937, after Nanjing was occupied by the Japanese invaders, the Kuomintang government moved from Nanjing to Chongqing and designed the latter as its war time capital. During World War II period, Chongqing was the seat of headquarters of US Forces in China-Burma-India Theater Being as the wartime capital of China, Chongqing began to develop into a modern industrial city at the end of 1940s.
In the years following the founding of New China, out of being the location of both the Southwest Bureau and the Southwest Military and Political Committee under the Communist Party of China, and as the municipality directly under the central government for a short period of time, Chongqing had practically become the political, economic and cultural center of Southwest China. In 1954, Chongqing became a city under the jurisdiction of Sichuan provincial government. In 1983, Chongqing took the lead in experimenting on comprehensive economic structural reforms and was granted provincial jurisdiction over economy. Ever since the resolution of the State Council being approved on March 14,1997 by the fifth session of the Eighth National people's Congress, Chongqing has gained the status of the municipality directly under the central government, the fourth one together with Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjing. Chongqing today administrates original Chongqing, Wanxian, Fuling and Qianjiang Region.
