ABSTRACT
On 14 March 1997, the Eighth National People's Congress approved a motion to separate Chongqing City from Sichuan Province and to elevate Chongqing from a sub-provincial to a centrally administered city (zhixia shi). This decision added Chongqing to China's thirty-one provinces, autonomous regions and centrally administered cities. On 18 June, two weeks before Hong Kong was returned to China, Premier Li Peng visited Chongqing to announce the official change of status of Chongqing City.
