Counties of China
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County 县 Xiàn | |
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Category | Third level administrative division of a unitary state |
Location | People's Republic of China |
Found in | Prefectures, Provinces |
Number | 1,319 (1,307 controlled, 11 claimed) (as of 2023) |
Government |
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Subdivisions |
County | |||||||||
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Chinese name | |||||||||
Zhuang | Yen | ||||||||
Korean name | |||||||||
Hangul | 현 | ||||||||
Mongolian name | |||||||||
Mongolian script | ᠰᠢᠶᠠᠨ | ||||||||
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Uyghur name | |||||||||
Uyghur | ناھىيە | ||||||||
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Administrative divisions of China |
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History: 1912–49, 1949–present
Administrative division codes |
Counties (
The term xian is sometimes translated as "district" or "prefecture" when put in the context of Chinese history.
History
Xian have existed since the
In Imperial China, the county was a significant administrative unit because it marked the lowest level of the imperial bureaucratic structure;[citation needed] in other words, it was the lowest level that the government reached. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, varying between dynasties. The head of a county was the magistrate, who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases.
During the Republican period, counties were the second level administrative divisions of its provinces. After the Chinese Civil War, counties became subordinate to prefectural level cities while the previous structure is retained. The counties became directly governed by the Executive Yuan after the provinces became streamlined in 1998, but they were fully abolished in 2018.
Autonomous counties
Autonomous counties (自治县; zìzhìxiàn) are a special class of counties in mainland China reserved for non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities. Autonomous counties are found all over China, and are given, by law, more legislative power than regular counties.
There are 117 autonomous counties in mainland China.
Government
As the
See also
- Counties of China — historical
- List of counties in the People's Republic of China
- List of county-level divisions of China
- History of the administrative divisions of China
- Attached county, a former sort of xian in late Imperial China
- County (Taiwan)
References
Citations
- ISBN 9780231159203.
- ISBN 9781782544364.
Sources
- Ch'u, T'ung-tsu (1962), Local Government in China under the Ch'ing, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press