Chungking (Chung King or Chongqing) is the largest and most populous of the People's Republic of China's four municipalities, which have provincial-level status. It is the only municipality in west of the densely populated eastern half of China. The placename literally means "Double Celebration".

The municipal abbreviation, Yu, was approved by the State Council on April 18, 1997. Yu had previously been used by the Kuomintang. It is the old name of a part of the Jialing River that runs through Chungking with the Yangtze.

The city centre consists of the districts of Jiangbei, Shapingba, Jiulongpo, Dadukou, and Yuzhong.

Chungking is said to be the semi-mythical State of Ba that began in 11th century BC, when the Ba people began living here until they were destroyed by the State of Qin.

Since 1929, Chungking was a municipality of the Republic of China. Chungking was the provisional capital of the government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek during World War II (Second Chinese-Japanese War). The capital had been moved in 1937 from Nanjing, as a consequence of the Battle of Nanjing and the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese troops. After the communist takeover, in 1954, the municipality was reduced to a provincial city of the People's Republic.

For three years, Chungking had been a sub-provincial city of Sichuan Province, until March 14, 1997, as decided in the Eighth National People's Congress, the original Chungking City was merged with the neighbouring Fuling, Wanxian, and Qianjiang that had been governed by Chungking City on behalf of the province since September of the previous year. These four prefecture-level entities were all abolished as distinct administrative divisions and formed one new Chungking Municipality that contained 30,020,000 people in their 43 former counties (without intermediate political levels). The first official ceremony took place on June 18 of that year. The municipality was formed to spearhead China's effort to develop its western regions as well as to coordinate the resettlement of refugees from the Three Gorges Dam project.