Chongqing

Chongqing () is vastest and the most populated of the 4 municipality-province (called autonomous municipalities) of the Popular republic of China and only out of the part is country, the densest area. With: 82300 km ², its surface is higher than that of the Bénélux. It is located on the Yangzi Jiang, just upstream of the big lake of reserve of the Barrage of the Three Throats. The municipality is of recent creation: it was detached from the province of the Sichuan, then most populated of all the Chinese provinces, in 1997. The leading cause of this change of status is the management of the lake of the Barrage of the Three-Throats, and in particular of the displacement and the rehousing of the bordering people of the river.

The municipality has a population of: 31442300 inhabitants in 2005, whose majority live apart from the urban area of Chongqing, within large arable lands. The population of the urban area of Chongqing was estimated at 3,4 million in 2004, which in fact roughly the 10th more Chinese big city. If one counts the not recorded migrants coming from the countryside, the population of the urban area can be estimated at 7,5 million.

The agglomeration is built with the confluence of the Yangzi Jiang and its affluent the Jialing. The center of the east city built on the peninsula formed by these two rivers. The topography of the city is very particular: Chongqing is only made up of escarpées hills, which makes of it the only big city Chinese free from bicycles, the slopes being too stiff there.

It is also the only city where the crossing of the rivers was carried out partially using cable cars. Since the opening of Chongqing to international, in particular since 1997, of many bridges were built to supplement this network.

After the massacre perpetrated in Nankin during the Sino-Japanese war by the Armed imperial Japanese woman, Chongqing became the capital of nationalist China belonging to the government of the Guomindang. She holds the title of the most bombarded city war with more than 5000 bombardments made by the aviation shôwa and having resulted in the death of several tens of thousands of civilians.

Evolution of the population

She passed from: 31070000 inhabitants with a density of 378 inhabitants per km ² in 2002, with a population of: 31442300 inhabitants with a density of 382 inhabitants per km ² in 2004. If one sticks to his administrative borders, Chongqing is in 2007 more the big city of the world, with more than 34 million inhabitants. More: 500000 peasants of the neighborhoods join it each year.

Administrative subdivisions

The municipality of Chongqing consists of forty subdivisions of level county (three of them abolished in 1997), being divided into nineteen districts, seventeen counties and four autonomous counties.

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^a Indicates the district with which the subdivision was associated before the fusion of Chongqing, Fuling, Wanxian (from now on Wanzhou) and Qianjiang in 1997.

Twin towns

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