A province known as hometown of giant pandas

Population: 83,674,866 (2020)

Area: 486,000 square kilometers

Location: Located in Southwest China, Sichuan province occupies most of the Sichuan Basin and the easternmost part of the Tibetan Plateau between the Jinsha River on the west, the Daba Mountains in the north, and the Yungui Plateau to the south.

Economy

Historically known as the "Province of Abundance", Sichuan has one of the largest economies in western China. Its GDP for 2018 was 4.07 trillion yuan ($589.9 billion), up 8 percent year-on-year.

The value-added of its primary industry in 2018 stood at 442.67 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.6 percent; the value-added of its secondary industry was 1.53 trillion yuan, increasing by 7.5 percent over the previous year; and that of its tertiary industry hit 2.09 trillion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 9.4 percent.

The province's imports and exports rose 29.2 percent to 594.79 billion yuan in 2018. Of them, imports stood at 261.31 billion yuan, growing 26.5 percent year-on-year, while exports were 333.48 billion yuan, up 31.4 percent year-on-year.

Administrative divisions

Sichuan province governs 18 prefecture-level cities and three autonomous prefectures. They are Chengdu, its provincial capital, Mianyang, Zigong, Panzhihua, Luzhou, Deyang, Guangyuan, Suining, Neijiang, Leshan, Ziyang, Yibin, Nanchong, Dazhou, Ya'an, Guang'an, Bazhong, Meishan, Aba Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture, Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, and Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture.

Sister cities