THE CITY of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has been quietly, but assuredly, establishing itself as one of the top go-to investment destinations in China in the past few years, a fact recognised last week when Fortune magazine named the Sichuan provincial capital as host of its annual global forum in June next year.

“We are the engine city for western economic development. We are seizing new opportunities of economic development. It shows the major achievement made by the local government after the great earthquake in 2008 and how to mitigate the impact of the financial crisis,” said Ge Honglin, the mayor of Chengdu.

The city has 500 million consumers within a three-hour radius, and has successfully wooed all kinds of companies to set up there. According to Ge Honglin, one in every two laptops has its chips made in Chengdu, and half the iPads in the world come from there.

Chengdu has been the focal point of the national “Go West” strategy aimed at boosting the economy in the west of the country, which has underperformed when compared to the coastal cities of China and the south.

There is a healthy rivalry between Chengdu and nearby Chongqing, which is now a municipality of 32 million people administered by the central government, but which formerly jostled for position with Chengdu as Sichuan’s top city.

Chengdu has always had a close link to money. This is the city where the world’s first paper currency, the “jiao zi”, was issued in 1023 during the Song dynasty.

The city was founded in 316 BC and, unusually for a Chinese city, it hasn’t moved since but was built on and expanded over the centuries. Ancient Chinese poets warned scholars against going to Sichuan when you were too young, as you could lose yourself in the province’s pleasures.

Big global players such as Intel have come to Chengdu to take advantage of cheap educated labour, abundant land and tax incentives offered by the government to lure investment to this western region at the edge of Tibet.

China’s fifth largest city with more than 11 million inhabitants, Chengdu is just as dirty and traffic-clogged as any other massive urban sprawl.

What makes it different from any other Chinese megalopolis is its vital street life. With more than 4,000 teahouses and 3,000 pubs, Chengdu has more night spots than China’s biggest city Shanghai, even though it has just over half Shanghai’s population.

Motorola, Intel, Foxconn, Siemens and Lafarge are among the big companies with offices in Chengdu, while it boasts a host of consulates, including the US, France, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand.