A sum is the lowest level of

administrative division Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...

used in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million ...

, and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

. The word ''sum'' is a direct translation of the Manchu word ''niru'', meaning ‘arrow’. Countries such as China and Mongolia have employed the sum as administrative division, which was used during the

Qing dynasty 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-speak ...

. This system was acted in the 1980s after the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...

gained power in conjunction with their growing internal and external problems. The decentralisation of government included restructuring of organisational methods, reduction of roles in rural government and creation of sums.

Mongolia

A sum (, , ) is the second level administrative division below the ''aimags'' (provinces), roughly comparable to a

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. There are 331 sums in Mongolia. Each sum is again divided into '' bags''.Ole Bruun Precious Steppe: Mongolian Nomadic Pastoralists in Pursuit of the Market (2006). p. 68. "The historical administrative units of aimag, sum, and bag (Khotont constitutes one of nineteen sums in Arkangai aimag) still form the bases …"

Russia

, a sumon is an administrative division of the Tuva Republic, and somon is that of the Buryat Republic. Both describe the Russian term '' selsoviet''.

China

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

, a sum (; ,

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

: ''sūmù''), sometimes called a sumu, is an

. The ''sum'' division is equivalent to a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, ...

but is unique to Inner Mongolia. It is therefore larger than a '' gaqa'' () and smaller than a

banner A banner can be a flag or another piece of cloth bearing a symbol, logo, slogan or another message. A flag whose design is the same as the shield in a coat of arms (but usually in a square or rectangular shape) is called a banner of arms. Als ...

(the

equivalent of the

-level division). Examples include Shiwei, Inner Mongolia and Honggor Sum, Siziwang Banner. ''Sums'' whose population is predominated by ethnic minorities are designated ethnic sums – parallel with the ethnic township in the rest of China. , there is only one ethnic sum in China, the Evenk Ethnic Sum.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sum (administrative division) Types of administrative division Articles containing Mongolian script text Administrative divisions in Asia

Mongolia

Russia

China

See also

References