A county-level municipality (), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: ; 1970–1983: ), is a
county-level administrative division of the
People's Republic of China. County-level cities have
judicial but no
legislative rights over their own
local law and are usually governed by
prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by
province-level divisions.
A county-level city is a "city" () and "county" () that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. As such it is simultaneously a city, which is a municipal entity and a county which is an administrative division of a prefecture. Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing denser populated
counties.
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
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
,
villages and farmland. To distinguish a "county-level city" from its actual urban area (the traditional meaning of the word "city"), the term "" (shìqū) or "urban area", is used.
Comparable territorial divisions in other countries
In
France, an equivalent of a county-level city is an
agglomeration community.
While the idea of a "city" being a unit consisting of several "towns" is not a common one in
English-speaking world, a somewhat similar naming convention is used for
local government areas
A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a state, province, division, or territory.
The phrase i ...
in some parts of Australia.
For example,
in New South Wales such a unit may often be called a "city" (rather than a traditional "shire"), and consist of "towns". E.g.
City of Blue Mountains is made of a number of towns (
Katoomba,
Springwood, etc.).
Another example would be "municipal government" in the Canadian province of Ontario. Small municipalities (cities) and towns, along with urban, sub-urban and rural areas were merged or integrated into a "super" area, in part to obtain economies in administrative overhead by not having for each city and town individual library commissions, fire fighting units, health care, and other social services common to all areas.
List
As of February 2022, there are 397 county-level cities in total:
Sub-prefectural cities
A
sub-prefectural city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of
prefecture-level cities. Examples include,
Xiantao (
Hubei),
Qianjiang (
Hubei),
Tianmen (
Hubei) and
Jiyuan (
Henan).
See also
*
Administrative divisions of China
*
Counties of the People's Republic of China
*
Prefecture-level city
*
List of cities in China
References
Understanding the Chinese Economies, Rongxing Guo · 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:County-Level City
Administrative divisions of China
*Cou
County-level divisions of the People's Republic of China