An attached county or satellite county, sometimes left untranslated in its

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

name as a ''fuguoxian'', was a kind of historical tertiary administrative division in late

Imperial China The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the '' Book of Documents'' (early chapte ...

. It was a '' xian'' (generally translated for this period as " county" in English) based within the capital of a '' fu'' (generally translated for this period as "

prefecture A prefecture (from the Latin ''Praefectura'') is an administrative jurisdiction traditionally governed by an appointed prefect. This can be a regional or local government subdivision in various countries, or a subdivision in certain international ...

"). As such, many of the county magistrate's usual duties and powers were subordinated to the prefectural administration and he was subject to much closer supervision than usual. Although an attached county was given first rank among the divisions of a prefecture and known as the "head county", the position was avoided by most scholar-bureaucrats. A

Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...

proverb held that, "If you had done something bad in your previous incarnation, you would be an average magistrate now; if you had done something worse, you would be a magistrate of a prefectural attached county; but if you had done something worst, you would be a magistrate of a provincial attached county" ("").

History

Since the Yuan dynasty, some '' zhou'' (smaller prefectures) began to be compact to dissolve their attached counties, thus they had direct authority over their walled cities along with environs (namely, ''zhou'' proper), rather than via any county. Since the Ming dynasty, all the attached counties of ''zhou'' (subprefectures) were eliminated. Under the Ming and

, it was standard for every prefecture to have an attached county with a limited role within and around the prefectural capital. There were, generally, multiple attached counties in larger prefectures: three and four in one instance, respectively (

Suzhou Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade ...

, since 1724: Wu, Changzhou and Yuanhe; Jingzhao in

Tang Tang or TANG most often refers to: * Tang dynasty * Tang (drink mix) Tang or TANG may also refer to: Chinese states and dynasties * Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...

, since the late 660s: Chang'an,

Wannian Wannian () is a county in the northeast of Jiangxi province, China. It is under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Shangrao. Its total area is . Its 2003 population was . Wannian County comprises 6 towns and 9 townships. The count ...

Qianfeng Qianfeng District () is a district of the prefecture-level city of Guang'an in Sichuan province, China. It was created in February 2013 by splitting off a subdistrict, seven towns and five townships from Guang'an District. It governs an area ...

, and Mingtang), two in all others. In such cases, their boundary ran through the walled city, and their owned yamen were sited in the appropriate sectors. Some attached counties are reserved so far. However, with urbanization, many of them have been merged, similar to the

consolidated city-county In United States local government, a consolidated city-county is formed when one or more cities and their surrounding county ( parish in Louisiana, borough in Alaska) merge into one unified jurisdiction. As such it has the governmental powers o ...

in the US.

References

Citations

Bibliography

* . * * . * . * {{citation , last=Zhao , first=Yicai , contribution=Two Special Forms of Attached Counties in heTraditional Chinese System , title=Journal of Literature, History, & Philosophy , date=2022 , issue=5 , pages=44–58 . Counties of China Types of administrative division