Sichuan Province

Sichuan's modern industry began with the Self-Strengthening Movement. In 1877 (the third year of Guangxu), Sichuan Governor-General Ding Baozhen set up the Sichuan Machinery Bureau in Chengdu to make guns, cannon and munitions — the first modern machine works in the south-west. In the same era Zigong's salt fields built large-scale salt chemistry on tubular-well technology and natural-gas boiling; the distilleries of Luzhou and Yibin shipped nationwide down the Yangtze; Neijiang's sugar industry spread the name "Sweet City"; and the two ports of Chengdu and Chongqing gathered modern light-industry factories — matches, textiles, printing. The opening of steamship navigation on the Chuanjiang pushed Sichuan's handicraft workshops to the threshold of machine production.

After full-scale war of resistance broke out in 1937, coastal and riverside factories moved inland en masse, and Sichuan (including Chongqing as it then was) became the industrial core of the rear area. The National Resources Commission and the Ordnance Administration laid out steel, ordnance, machinery, electrical and chemical enterprises across Sichuan and Chongqing; equipment from the Hanyang Iron Works moved west to Dadukou to form the Steel Plant Relocation Committee. State-owned and private firms such as the Central Radio Apparatus Factory, Yuhua Mill and Shenxin No. 4 Mill relocated to Chengdu, Chongqing, Yibin, Luzhou and Wanxian. The relocation brought equipment, skilled workers and management systems: for the first time Sichuan had modern industry spanning metallurgy, ordnance, machinery, textiles and chemicals — and a complete industrial skeleton and technical talent pool survived into the post-war era.

From 1964 the state built out the Third Front around the "two bases and one line" (the Panzhihua steel base, the conventional-ordnance base centred on Chongqing, and the Chengdu-Kunming Railway), and Sichuan was one of the provinces that drew the most concentrated investment. Aviation (Factory 132 Chengfei, Factory 420 Chengfa), electronics (the Hongming Radio Apparatus Factory, Factory 780 — forerunner of Changhong), heavy equipment (the Second Heavy Machinery Plant, Dongfang Electric Machinery, Dongfang Turbine), the nuclear industry (the Ninth Academy relocated to Zitong, CNNC Jianzhong's fuel-element plant) and conventional ordnance (the Changjiang crane and excavator works, the Nanshan Machine Factory and others) were built in succession, the "mountain-backed, dispersed, concealed" siting embedding cutting-edge capacity into Sichuan's hills and rivers. The programme left Sichuan a full-spectrum heavy-industry system rare in the country — still the industrial bedrock of Deyang's heavy equipment, Mianyang's science city, Chengdu's aviation and electronics, and Yibin's nuclear fuel.

After reform and opening-up, Third Front enterprises converted to civilian production: Changhong moved from military radar to colour TVs and became a national home-appliance icon; Jialing motorcycles and Changan Automobile (part of Sichuan before Chongqing became a municipality) drove the motorcycle and vehicle industries. The Chengdu High-tech Zone was established in 1988, and electronic information shifted from defence supply to civilian complete machines and components. Construction of Mianyang Science City began in 2000, accelerating the industrialisation of research-institute resources. The "5·12" mega-earthquake of 2008 badly damaged Dongfang Turbine's Hanwang works at Mianzhu; the whole plant was relocated and rebuilt in Deyang's Bajiao New District, writing an industrial-rebirth record of "two years to rebuild, ten years to leap ahead".

In 2020 the Central Commission for Financial and Economic Affairs deployed the Chengdu-Chongqing twin-city economic circle; the two economies together broke CNY 10 trillion, and Sichuan became a main recipient of inland opening-up and industrial relocation. In 2025 the province built 1.151 million vehicles — over one million for the first time, up 29.6%; industrial-robot output rose 45.9%, lithium-ion cells 45.1%, and value added in power batteries and vanadium-titanium grew 28.4% and 16.0% respectively. Natural gas output of 72.88 billion cubic metres and hydro generation of 381.63 billion kWh both ranked first nationally, with clean energy underpinning green aluminium, green silicon and data centres. From Chengdu's trillion-yuan electronic-information cluster to Yibin the power-battery capital, Deyang's world-class generation equipment and Panzhihua's vanadium-titanium magnetite utilisation — no western province matches Sichuan's industrial layers and depth.