The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With 8,472 square miles (21,940 km2) and a population of more than 2.2 million people, it is the second-largest metropolitan area centered in Missouri (after Greater St. Louis) and is the largest metropolitan area in Kansas, though Wichita is the largest metropolitan area centered in Kansas. Alongside Kansas City, Missouri, these are the suburbs with populations above 100,000: Overland Park, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; Olathe, Kansas; Independence, Missouri; and Lee's Summit, Missouri.
Shiqu County, which belongs to Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province, is located in the junction of Sichuan, Qinghai and Tibet provinces on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Shiqu County is one of the most remote and inconvenient counties in Sichuan Province. Shiqu starts from the southern foot of Bayan Kara Mountain in the north, reaches the Mora Mountain Section of the Saluli Mountains in the south, borders Yushu Prefecture in Qinghai in the northwest, Jiangda County in Tibet in the southwest, and Seda County and Dege County in the southeast. It is 696 kilometers away from Kangding and 1070 kilometers away from Chengdu, with an average elevation of 4520 meters above sea level. By the end of 2018, Shiqu County had an area of 25191 square kilometers and had jurisdiction over 4 working committees, 7 towns, 15 townships, 1 state-owned pastures, 170 villages and 4 neighborhood committees, with a total resident population of 101294 at the end of 2017. In 2018, the regional GDP reached 992 million yuan, an increase of 6% over the same period last year.