11 October 2005, Chongqing and Brisbane entered agreement to establish sister city relations.
A Brief Introduction of Chongqing City
Chongqing is located in Southwestern China and on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. It has jurisdiction over 38 districts and counties, covering an area of 82,400 km2 with 31.02 million permanent residents and an urbanization rate of 65.5%. Known as a "mountain city", Chongqing is famous for its hills and mountains that cover 76% of its land. The Yangtze River runs through Chongqing, extending 691 km, and is joined by the Jialing River and Wujiang River. Chongqing boasts rich tourism resources such as the Three Gorges, Dazu Rock Carvings, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage and Wulong Karst Landscape, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage and Jinfo Mountain of Nanchuan District.
Chongqing is a famous historical and cultural city of China with a recorded history of over 3,000 years. It is the birthplace of Ba-Yu Culture (an ancient culture originated in Sichuan and Chongqing). During the Second World War, Chongqing served as the wartime capital of the China and the Far East Command Center of the Anti-Fascist War. In March 1997, as approved by the Fifth Session of the Eighth National People's Congress, Chongqing was promoted as a Municipality which directly reports to the Central Government, the only such Municipality in Central and Western China.
The Central Leadership of China has extended great care to and placed high expectations on Chongqing. General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the positioning and goals of Chongqing, namely, Chongqing serves as an anchor in the Large-scale Western Development and a juncture of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21stCentury Maritime Silk Road as well as the Yangtze Economic Belt, thus Chongqing needs to unleash the potential of its geographic advantages, sound ecological environment, industrial strength, and enabling institutions. Chongqing is instructed by the Central Leadership to speed up exploring new horizons of opening-up, preserving a charming landscape of lush mountains and lucid rivers and working to realize high-quality development and ensure high-quality livelihood for its people. Meanwhile, Chongqing should continue to be an anchor of the Large-scale Western Development in the new era, a driver in advancing the Belt and Road Cooperation and a leader of green development along the Yangtze River Economic Belt.
Being a traditional manufacturing base, Chongqing boasts solid industrial foundation and complete industrial categories. The Municipality is taking the initiative to accelerate economic structural transformation and upgrading, and endeavoring to become an integral part of global industrial development. The construction of international industrial parks is speeded up, including the China-Germany, China-UK, China-Italy, China-Switzerland, China-Israel, China-South Korea, and China-Japan Industrial Parks. Chongqing has the largest automobile industry cluster in China. It is the important mobile phone manufacturing base as well as the electronics and information industry base in the world. Chongqing is now putting into practice the Action Plan for Innovation-driven Development Strategy Pioneered by Big Data and Smart Technology, as a result, emerging industries with core competitiveness and strategic importance are burgeoning represented by intelligent terminals, integrated circuits(IC), new types of displays, cloud computing and big data technology, Internet of Things(IOT) and artificial intelligence(AI). The value of the smart industry in Chongqing amounted to RMB 460 billion Yuan with the made-in-Chongqing intelligent products being sold worldwide, thus putting in place a modernized industrial system.
In 2018, 3,096-kilometer expressways and a "4-hour transportation network" have been completed. The "one hub and ten arteries" railway networks have been built. The annual cargo throughput of the Chongqing port hits 200 million tons, and the Jiangbei International Airport, with 82 international air routes,accommodates 41.6 million passengers annually. As a pioneer of opening-up in Chinese inland, opening-up corridors have been built including the Yangtze River Golden Waterway and the China-Europe Railway Express (Chongqing). The third intergovernmental cooperation project between China and Singapore has been launched in Chongqing. The China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) is making practical progress. The development of Chongqing as an international logistics hub and a city with a complete port system in Chinese inland is picking up steam. Chongqing has advanced its efforts in building an eco-security shield in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The general water quality of the Yangtze River, Jialing River and Wujiang River is good. The city proper of Chongqing registers 316 days of good air quality and the forest coverage rate in the Municipality reaches 48%.
At present, Chongqing maintains a sound development momentum. In 2018, Chongqing's GDP reached RMB 2.04 trillion Yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6% and its per-capita GDP is close to USD10,000. Fixed asset investment increased by 7%；the total retail sales of consumer goods grew by 8.7%; imports and exports was up by 15.9%, and income of urban and rural residents rose by 8.4% and 9% respectively.
For eight years consecutively, the actual utilization of foreign capital in Chongqing exceeded USD 10 billion. By the end of 2018, 287 out of the Fortune 500 enterprises have already based in Chongqing. In 2018, foreign direct investment (FDI) of Chongqing ranked 1st in the Central and Western regions and 9th in China at large. The import and export volume reached RMB 522.2 billion Yuan, an year-on-year increase of 15.9%. Emerging industries like smart manufacturing have become the new highlight of Chongqing's foreign trade; the international service outsourcing amounted to USD2.13 billion, ranking 1st in Midwest China. Chongqing is pushing forward measures to enable liberalization of investment, facilitation of trade, modernization of financial services and convenience of settlement. In-depth reform measures have been taken to realize "streamlining administration and delegating government powers". A "72-hour visa-free policy" has been issued to transit international passengers from 53 countries. Chongqing has trade relations with 224 countries and regions around the world and is home to 10 foreign Consulates General, ranking the 4th in China.
