The towering mountain and the low river valleys are witnesses of a history with three thousand years of civilization of Chongqing.In the long river of history, the city, with its tremendous power of cohesion and influence upon its neighboring areas, became a regional military and political center and a distributing center of commodities.

It has been a flourishing city for over a thousand years. In the last hundred years and more, the city grew with its commerce, flourished with the move in of political and industrial establishments from the coastal areas of east China, and achieved economic take-off with the reform.

As a result, the city of Chongqing has changed from an ancient military strategic pass into a city open to the outside world that holds a strategic position connecting the central and western parts of China, from an ancient regional trading center into an economic center on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, from a city of entrepot trade of the 19^th century into the largest multi-functional modern industrial and commercial city in west China, and from a port city in east part of the Sichuan basin into a municipality directly under the central government that stands in the hinterland of China but faces different parts of the world. The rapid rise of Chongqing in western China, with its glorious past and fast changing present, has left its mark in the history of development of China and has become the center of focus of world attention.