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County-level city
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China This article is part of the series: Political divisions of China |
|---|
| Province level |
| Provinces |
| Autonomous areas |
| Municipalities |
| Special Administrative Regions |
| Prefecture level |
| Prefectures |
| Autonomous prefectures |
| Prefecture-level cities |
| (incl. Sub-provincial cities) |
| Leagues |
| County level |
| Counties |
| Autonomous counties |
| County-level cities |
| (incl. Sub-prefecture-level cities) |
| City districts |
| Banners |
| Autonomous banners |
| Township level |
| Townships |
| Ethnic townships |
| Towns |
| Subdistricts |
| Sumu |
| Ethnic sumu |
| County districts |
A county-level city (Chinese: 县级市; pinyin: xiànjí shì) is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions.
Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing counties. This process was halted in 1997.
County-level cities are not "cities" in the strictest sense of the word, since they usually contain rural areas many times the size of their urban, built-up area. This is because the counties that county-level cities have replaced are themselves large administrative units containing towns, villages, and farmland. To distinguish a "county-level city" from its actual urban area (the traditional meaning of the word "city"), the term 市区 shìqū, or "urban area", is used. An equivalent in France is an agglomeration community.
A sub-prefecture-level city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of prefecture-level cities. Examples include Jiyuan (Henan province), Xiantao (Hubei), and Golmud (Qinghai).