China’s regional economic map just gained a new landmark. Provincial data and official disclosures show Sichuan’s 2025 GDP at 6.77 trillion yuan and Chongqing’s at 3.37 trillion, meaning the two jurisdictions together now exceed 10 trillion yuan and the Chengdu–Chongqing twin-city economic circle approaches 9 trillion.
The milestone matters less as an arithmetic curiosity than as the culmination of a long-running structural shift. Chongqing was carved out of Sichuan and elevated in 1997; for decades the two operated as separate administrative units even as their economies and transport links remained intertwined. Today they are deliberately being reintegrated as a national-level growth pole under the “Chengdu–Chongqing” development strategy.
Growth has several tangible drivers. Large-scale fiscal transfers and preferential central investment into western infrastructure have helped — the two jurisdictions together receive more than 800 billion yuan in transfer payments — and tax incentives for inland development have encouraged capital flows. Yet policy alone does not explain persistent outperformance; the region’s rise reflects deeper industrial transformation and cluster formation.
Sichuan and Chongqing have built multiple trillion-yuan sectors: electronic information, advanced equipment manufacturing, new materials and specialty consumer goods. Production of notebooks, tablets, displays, photovoltaics, batteries and new-energy vehicles now ranks among China’s leaders, and five national advanced-manufacturing clusters span electronics, biopharma, energy equipment, aerospace and software-services, with several clusters jointly developed across the two jurisdictions.
That industrial depth owes as much to market forces and firm-level innovation as to central policy. Western relocation of coastal factories, tax breaks, and heavy infrastructure investment created the conditions; local choices — Chongqing’s vertical-integrated approach to EVs and Sichuan’s moves into large aircraft and nuclear components — have delivered the scale and sophistication that sustain growth beyond headline stimulus.
The economic implications are regional and strategic. The Chengdu–Chongqing axis now ranks as the West’s largest growth pole, offering Beijing an alternative counterweight to the wealthy eastern seaboard. It also complicates interprovincial competition: Sichuan has eclipsed Henan as the largest inland economy, while city-level industrial champions across Sichuan and Chongqing are moving from provincial appendages to independent players in national supply chains. The challenge ahead will be sustaining private-sector dynamism and upgrading value chains once preferential policy tailwinds moderate.