Sichuan

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Province of central China, bounded to the north by Qinghai, Gansu, and Shaanxi; to the east by Hubei and Hunan; to the south by Guizhou and Yunnan; and to the west by Tibet; area 539,000 sq km/208,000 sq mi; population (2000 est) 83,290,000. The capital is Chengdu. There are coal, natural gas, iron ore, salt brine, textile, engineering, and electronics industries. Rice, wheat, and maize are grown.

History
Sichuan was annexed by China during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC). Before World War II the political situation in Sichuan was very unstable and it was the scene of frequent fighting between rival warlords. During the second of the Sino-Japanese Wars the nationalist Guomindang government withdrew to a new western capital at Chongqing. Many industries were also transferred to the province from the coastal cities at this time. In 1955 the province nearly doubled in size with the addition of all but the western part of Xikang. Sichuan had a second wave of industrial development in the 1960s and 1970s when the central government transferred heavy and defence industries into Sichuan, away from areas of potential invasion in the east and north of China. In the late 1970s Sichuan's chief administrator, former premier Zhao Ziyang, pioneered radical and market-oriented rural reforms in the province. In 1997 Sichuan lost a tenth of its area and a quarter of its population when Chongqing was enlarged to include the east and southeast of the province, and was made administratively independent of the province as the fourth municipality directly under the central government.

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