Chongqing City

Chongqing's modern industry began with its opening as a treaty port in 1891, on a weak base: in 1937 Sichuan had only 115 industrial and mining enterprises of any scale, 2.93% of the national total, most of them in Chongqing. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance, the Nationalist government relocated the capital inland and coastal factories moved en masse to the rear. In autumn 1938, Lu Zuofu of Minsheng Company organized an emergency evacuation through Yichang, completing in 40 days a shipping volume that would normally take a year — at the cost of 16 vessels lost and 116 employees killed. The Dadukou Steel and Iron Plant, formed from Hanyang Iron Works and Shanghai Steel Plant (predecessor of Chongqing Iron & Steel), went into production in February 1939 and supplied 90% of the steel feedstock for national wartime ordnance production from 1941 to 1945; the No. 21 Arsenal led by Li Chenggan became the largest arsenal in the rear areas; among the 424 private enterprises relocated inland, 169 were machinery and electrical firms. By 1945, Chongqing had 1,690 factories and 106,500 workers — 60% and 58% of Sichuan's totals respectively. Third Front construction launched in 1964 with Chongqing as its largest central city: from 1964 to 1966, units under 15 central ministries relocated to Chongqing from 12 provinces and municipalities, bringing 43,488 employees, and the state separately arranged 59 backbone and supporting projects. Southwest Aluminum (Plant 112), the Sichuan Vinylon Plant, Fuling's Project 816, Jiangjin's Plant 468 and the Sichuan Instrument General Plant were all established; conventional ordnance enterprises grew from 10 to 48, forming five pillars — metallurgy, chemicals, machinery, textiles and food. In 1980, Chongqing ranked 5th among major Chinese cities in industrial fixed assets and 7th in gross industrial output. After becoming a directly administered municipality in 1997, it underwent a painful "cutting off the arm" restructuring and returned to overall profitability in 2000. Its automobile output ranked first nationally for three consecutive years from 2014 to 2016 (3.16 million units in 2016), fell to 1.383 million units in 2019 (dropping to seventh), and has been restructured since June 2023 under the "33618" system. The Third Front backbone projects can be traced to specific plants: Southwest Aluminum Processing Plant (Plant 112) broke ground in 1965 and started production in 1970, becoming one of China's largest aluminum processing bases; the Sichuan Vinylon Plant introduced complete equipment sets from France and Japan in 1974 and successfully commissioned production in 1979; Fuling's Project 816, approved in 1966 as a nuclear raw-material industrial base, was halted in 1984 and converted to chemical fertilizer production.

In 2025, Chongqing's GDP reached 3,375.793 billion yuan, up 5.3%, with secondary industry value added of 1,178.774 billion yuan, up 4.0%. Above-scale industrial value added grew 5.9%; industrial value added, industrial tax revenue and strategic emerging industry output surpassed 900 billion yuan, 100 billion yuan and 1 trillion yuan respectively. Industry contributed 30%, 75% and 80% to the growth of the city's GDP, tax revenue and exports, and its high-quality manufacturing development index of 78.4 ranks first in western China. Chongqing has 39 of the country's 41 major industrial categories. Since June 2023 it has been building the "33618" modern manufacturing cluster system: three trillion-yuan-class leading clusters (intelligent connected NEVs, next-generation electronic information manufacturing, advanced materials), three 500-billion-yuan-class pillar clusters (intelligent equipment and smart manufacturing, food and agricultural product processing, software and information services), plus six 100-billion-yuan-class characteristic-advantage clusters and 18 "rising star" clusters. Among major products: automobiles 2.7877 million units, up 9.7% and first among Chinese cities, including 1.2961 million NEVs, up 36.0%, with per-vehicle value reaching 240,000 yuan; motorcycles 7.8575 million units, up 18.1% and first nationally; laptop computers 54.9807 million units, first globally for 12 consecutive years; smartphones 78.0505 million units, up 2.9%; and industrial robot output, up 27.0%. In the same period, above-scale industrial profits fell 3.7% and capacity utilization stood at 76.7% — expansion accompanied by pressure on earnings. In 2025 the city completed 135 new digital workshops and 28 new smart factories, bringing cumulative totals to 1,231 and 211; key technical upgrade projects delivered average efficiency gains of 57.6% and average operating cost reductions of 22.7%. The target is to lift gross industrial output above 4 trillion yuan by 2027. Technical upgrade investment is the most notable item of 2025: 1,513 new upgrade projects broke ground during the year, driving a 21.5% rise in investment in industrial equipment and tools; once completed, key upgrade projects raised production efficiency by an average of 57.6% and cut operating costs by an average of 22.7%.

Chongqing's robot industry originated in the smart upgrading and digital transformation needs of its automotive and electronics sectors, and now covers the full chain of R&D, complete-machine manufacturing, testing, system integration and workforce training. In 2024, citywide robot output exceeded 60,000 units and full-chain output value surpassed 37 billion yuan (the 60,000-unit figure is all-caliber output covering industrial, service and special robots, not annual new installations of industrial robots). No independently published official figures were found for Chongqing's annual new installations and stock of industrial robots (to be verified). In 2025, industrial robot output grew 27.0%. In October 2024, the Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology and seven other departments issued the "Chongqing 'Robot+' Application Action Plan (2024–2027)", covering welding, painting and assembly scenarios in automobiles, electronic information and equipment manufacturing, as well as input application, harvesting, sorting and primary processing in agriculture. Automobiles are the most robot-intensive field: Changan's Digital Intelligence Factory (in production since October 2024) is equipped with more than 1,400 robots and over 650 intelligent AGVs, and the Seres Super Factory (in service since February 2024) runs more than 3,000 robots with 100% automation in welding and painting. HSR's complete machines have a domestic-component rate above 95%. In 3C electronics, camera, battery and motherboard assembly at the OPPO plant in Yubei is already handled by automated equipment, with a whole-plant automation rate above 90%. In agriculture, zhacai processing is the most automated: Fuling Zhacai Group operates 13 automated lines at the 10,000-ton class, with ABB industrial robots working alongside bag-gripping and palletizing robots for boxing and stacking, and released the world's first AI intelligent fiber-stripping machine for zhacai in January 2025. Qinglong Village in Yubei has built a digital unmanned orchard for hilly terrain, equipped with an automated fruit-sorting line that grades by weight, appearance and internal quality; the Municipal Academy of Agricultural Sciences' unmanned orchard spraying robot, which targets trees directly, more than doubled working efficiency and saved over 30% of pesticide. There is no official public figure for the city's industrial robot density (units per 10,000 industrial workers, IFR caliber); the claim in industry reports of "600 units per 10,000 industrial workers in the auto industry" has no traceable official source (to be verified). Beyond automobiles: in 3C electronics, the OPPO plant in Yubei is representative, with camera, battery and motherboard assembly done by automated equipment and a whole-plant automation rate above 90%; in pharmaceuticals, Sinopharm Taiji's Fuling Pharmaceutical Plant became the world's first TCM industrial "Lighthouse Factory" in June 2026, with Zone A equipped with 12 fully automated high-speed filling lines and 15 fully automated high-speed packaging lines, while Zone B uses MES + DCS to remotely operate more than 1,200 equipment sets; in chemicals, Changfeng Chemical in Changshou deploys an explosion-proof intelligent inspection robot that patrols autonomously, monitors combustible and toxic gases in real time, takes automatic infrared temperature readings and transmits data to the control platform over a dedicated 5G network.