A Chinese dissident was jailed for three years yesterday for trying to help victims of last year's earthquake in Sichuan province. Huang Qi was sentenced less than a week after the US President Barack Obama urged China to grant its citizens greater human rights. The court ruling was interpreted as a clear sign that Beijing was unwilling to cede any ground on civil liberties. Mr Huang, a 46-year-old political activist and campaigner, had asked awkward questions on behalf of parents who believed their children would have survived if their shoddily-built schools had not collapsed when the huge...
photo: AP / Andy Wong
![Chongqing (simplified Chinese: 重庆; traditional Chinese: 重慶; pinyin: Chóngqìng; Postal map spelling: Chungking; Wade-Giles: Ch'ung-ch'ing) is a major city in central-western China. Administratively, it is one of the People's Republic of China's four provincial-level municipalities, and the only such municipality in western China. The municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the sub-provincial city administration that was part of Sichuan Province. The municipality of Chongqing has a registered population of 31,442,300 as of 2005.[1] The boundaries of Chongqing municipality reach much farther into the city's hinterland than the boundaries of the other three provincial level municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin), and much of its administrative area, which spans over 80 000 km², is rural. It has jurisdiction over 19 districts, 17 counties, and four autonomous counties. The population of the urban area of Chongqing proper was 5.09 million (2000).[2]](http://cdn0.wn.com/vp/i/ba/26ececdf103933.jpg){kind=small}
