Comment by seanmcdirmid

As a city in western terms, Chongqing only has around 8 million people, and is not even in the top twenty of Chinese cities. If you include the entire municipality that is the size of Vermont, it’s largely rural with other cities inside it (so 31 million people total, 22 million urban, 8 million for Chongqing proper). Compare with Beijing which has around 10 million in its proper area (inside 5th ring) and 20 million people total.