Counties of China

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

County

Xiàn
  • Also known as:
  • County-level divisions
CategoryThird level administrative division of a unitary state
LocationPeople's Republic of China
Found inPrefectures, Provinces
Number1,319 (1,307 controlled, 11 claimed) (as of 2023)
Government
Subdivisions
County
Chinese name
Zhuang
Yen
Korean name
Hangul
Mongolian name
Mongolian scriptᠰᠢᠶᠠᠨ
Uyghur name
Uyghurناھىيە

Counties (

city districts. There are 1,355 counties in mainland China
out of a total of 2,851 county-level divisions.

The term xian is sometimes translated as "district" or "prefecture" when put in the context of Chinese history.

History

Xian have existed since the

counties mostly resembled that of the later years of Qing dynasty. Changes of location and names of counties in Chinese history have been a major field of research in Chinese historical geography, especially from the 1960s to the 1980s.[citation needed
]

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

people's government
of the county, and its head is called the county governor (县长). The governor is often also one of the deputy secretaries in the CCP Committee.

See also

References

Citations

Sources