How to Understand the Provinces, Prefectures, Counties, and Towns of China: (Part 2)
Part 2, in which I tackle a long list of oddities, exceptions, and other rare features of the behemoth Chinese administrative structure.
Warning…This is not my normal content with travel content or taxi stories. This is a deep dive into a niche topic: the weird details of Chinese adminstrative governance. If it’s not your cup of baijiu, I don’t blame you in the slightest! Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
In June 2023, I published the Part 1 of this essay, where I attempted to lay out the “typical” structure and organization of China’s governance administrative units. But it’s a big country, with a lot of people, and there are always bound to be exceptions and rare cares. So at the time, I promised a Part 2 would be coming soon, to discuss the exceptions, oddities, and unique cases. Days turned into weeks turned into months, and now here we are, a year later, finally fulfilling this old promise.
I will start from the highest level (provincial) and bring the coverage progressively deeper until we arrive at the lowest level (village). The non-conventional governance units affect a very small portion of the country overall, but their existence is important for nerds (and they’ll make you great fun at your next gathering of China geography trivia lovers).
Chapter 1: Inner Mongolia
To start, I need to address Inner Mongolia. I almost finished this entire essay before I realizing I just had to make a separate section dedicated to Inner Mongolia (officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, or IMAR). IMAR breaks the “rules” of the PRC administrative structure by using a bunch of alternate administrative division names, usually references to words in Mongolian. These divisions are functionally the same as their equivalents in the rest of the country, but only exist in IMAR.
Leagues 盟
Leagues are essentially equal to prefecture-level cities. Leagues have slowly been converted to prefecture-level cities over time, and there are now just three leagues left in IMAR. Their administrative differences from prefecture-level cities are very minor (What’s a prefecture-level city? Get a refresher by reviewing Part 1).
Alxa League 阿拉善盟
Hinggan League 兴安盟
Xilingol League 锡林郭勒盟
IMAR’s three Leagues are geographically very large but sparsely populated (e.g., Alxa League by itself is larger than Jiangsu or Zhejiang Province, but has a population of only 270k).
I have only once visited a League, way back in 2012, when I took an overnight bus from Beijing to the Mongolian border on a visa run, which brought me through the border city of Erenhot (二连浩特), which is in Xilingol League.
Banners and Autonomous Banners 旗、自治旗
Banners are basically equivalent to counties. Inner Mongolia doesn’t only have banners; it has has plenty of normal counties as well. Banners are slowly being converted to counties, just like leagues are being converted to prefecture-level cities. So just remember, banner = county, for most intents and purposes.
Banners are related to historic Mongolian tribes and are generally found in the more remote and rural parts of Inner Mongolia, usually also featuring a high proportion of ethnic Mongolians living there. As they often correspond to ancient tribal locations, they sometimes will have a specific geographic or political orientation attached to their name (e.g., the “right banner”, “left banner”, or “united banner”). There are 49 banners in Inner Mongolia, making them much more common than counties.
Just as counties have corresponding Autonomous Counties, there are also “Autonomous Banners”. There are three Autonomous Banners in Inner Mongolia:
Oroqen Autonomous Banner (鄂伦春族自治旗)
Ewenki Autonomous Banner (鄂温克族自治旗)
Daur Autonomous Banner (达斡尔族自治旗).
The three autonomous banners are all found in Hulunbuir League, in the far northeast of Inner Mongolia. They correspond to some of the smallest ethnic minority groups in China, the Oroqen people, the Ewenki people, and the Daur people, found almost exclusively in this region.
Sums 苏木
A Sum in IMAR is equivalent to a Town (镇) in other parts of the country. Just like Leagues and Banners, they are slowly being converted over to their more mainstream unit name. There were just 153 Sums left in 2022. Many Banners have both Towns and Sums within them, like Alxa Right Banner (see below).
Ethnic Sum 民族苏木:
There is just one ‘Ethnic Sum’ in China, the Ewenki Ethnic Sum, in Old Barag Banner, Huluinbuir, IMAR. Thus, it is a true rarity - the only such unit in China.
Gacha 嘎查
Finally, the Gacha is IMAR’s equivalent to the Village (村). Inner Mongolia has both Villages and Gacha in great numbers. Gacha just means village in Mongolian.
Chapter 2: Sub-provincial Cities 副省级市
Now that we’ve gotten all of Inner Mongolia out of the way, we can start back at the high-level oddities and work our way down, starting with sub-provincial cities.
Sub-provincial level are cities that are elevated above other prefecture-level cities in their province, so that their status and administrative authority is higher than an otherwise equivalent city. Sub-provincial cities are granted greater autonomy to govern their own economic and financial affairs, instead of submitting to the planning of the province.
See this handy map of sub-provincial cities from Wikipedia:
This increased authority and responsibility means their leaders are a half-step higher than other prefecture-level cities, which is useful as an observer trying to assess the career progression of Party cadres. For instance, the Party Secretary of Ningbo is a higher role than the the Party Secretary of Wenzhou, because Ningbo is a sub-provincial city, and Wenzhou is just a regular prefecture-level city.
There will be always limits to the logic I just laid out above. The Mayor or Party Secretary of a large wealthy city in southern Jiangsu like Suzhou is of course a more prestigious role than the Mayor or Party Secretary of, say, Suqian City, in northern Jiangsu, although they are technically both prefecture-level cities. If a cadre moves from working for Suqian municipal government to working at a similar level for Suzhou municipal government, it’s safe to say it’s a promotion.
You’ll note that sub-provincial cities are often (although not always) the capital city of the province. A notable exception is Xiamen in Fujian (where the capital is Fuzhou, which is not a sub-provincial level city).
Additionally, there are three cases where both the province’s capital city and second-largest city are designated as sub-provincial cities, which accounts for the inclusion of Shenzhen, Ningbo, and Dalian (none of which are the capital cities of their province).
Chongqing used to be a sub-provincial level city of Sichuan before it was upgraded to a provincial-level municipality (which it still is today).
Sub-Provincial Districts 副省级区
There are also two Sub-Provincial City Districts: Binhai New Area in Tianjin, and Pudong New District in Shanghai. These are the only sub-provincial entities at the district level in China, highlighting the importance and status of these two zones.
Now remember, Shanghai itself is a provincial-level municipality, so its regular city districts are already elevated to same seniority level as a prefecture-level city in other parts of the country (for example, Huangpu’s Party Secretary could be considered to be on the same level as the Party Secretary of Wuxi City). Pudong New District, therefore, being elevated even higher than a regular Shanghai district, could be considered on the same level of a provincial capital, or about one and a half levels higher than a regular city district.
This implies the mayor of Pudong New District is on roughly the same level as the mayor of Nanjing or Hangzhou (or at the very least he/she enjoys the same degree of economic governance authority).
Pudong District being granted special status and privileges makes sense; after all, it was formed as a pilot development zone and has a population of over 5 million people, despite being just a single district of Shanghai (it got this large by swallowing the old Nanhui District back in 2009).
Chapter 3: Prefecture-Level Oddities:
The next level down is the prefecture level. I already discussed the most common administrative units at this level back in Part 1: i.e., the prefecture-level city and the semi-autonomous region. We also hit leagues up above, in the Inner Mongolia chapter. But there are more!
Prefectures 地区
Prefectures used to be the most common administrative unit at this level. Today, however, almost all prefectures have been converted into prefecture-level cities, and only 7 administrative units that still bear the “prefecture” 地区 title remain. Additionally, all the still-surviving prefectures are in far-flung regions on the periphery of the country. I’ve never visited one, and it’s likely that most Chinese people haven’t either (although they certainly have visited places that were once prefectures in the past). The total population of the 7 prefectures highlighted in the grey areas below is fewer than 10M people total.
Two of the prefectures in far northern Xinjiang (Tacheng and Altay) are governed by Ili, which itself is a unique entity, as I’ll discuss more below.
Additionally, Da Hingan Ling Prefecture in Heilongjiang (in the northeast) has a pretty unique and odd administrative structure itself that I will also discuss more, further down this page, when we get to the county-level oddities.
I don’t know the particular rationale for why these regions have not yet been converted into prefecture-level cities, but their administrative differences from a prefecture-level city appear to be very minor, aside from all the enclave and exclave business.
This “地区” name for the remaining prefectures today is a name used since the late 60s/early 70s. Before that, starting from the founding of the PRC, they were called 专区, and before that, in the Republican era, they were called 府, (except for a brief and ill-advised period from 1928-1932 when the ROC abolished the prefecture-level unit entirely, and then reinstated it after realizing what a bad idea that was).
The 府 unit itself was inherited from imperial China, and was utilized by dynasties stretching from the Qing back to the Tang (alongside a separate unit, the 州 , which was used to designate smaller prefectures).
Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC, 兵团）
The XPCC, or “Bingtuan” as it is sometimes called, is an administrative government structure born out of military construction units back in the 50s, still used to govern and develop large portions of Xinjiang today.
Unlike other administrative units, the Bingtuan does not govern a single contiguous area, but rather a collection of cities and regions across Xinjiang. Administratively, it is subordinate to Xinjiang Autonomous Region government, although it also seems to operate with a fairly high degree of autonomy vis a vis the Xinjiang government. All of the cities under its jurisdiction are sub-prefecture cities, which why I’ve put XPCC as being roughly at the prefecture level.
The history of the XPCC in the region is long and complex and outside of the scope of this essay, but makes for fascinating reading if you’d like to go down a very deep rabbit hole sometime.
Despite its name and background, the XPCC functions very similarly to a small regional government in many regards. For instance, large coastal cities like Shanghai might have economic promotion shops for Xinjiang agricultural products owned and operated by the XPCC, similar to how other regional governments promote their region’s economic interests.
Ili Autonomous Prefecture is Weird as Hell 伊犁州很特殊
Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture is a prefecture-level autonomous region BUT it has two prefecture-level entities governed under it (Tacheng and Altay Prefectures) which makes a very unique case, the only prefecture-level entity in the country that also governs other prefecture-level entities. Thus, it is sometimes also considered a “sub-provincial” unit, although it is not, strictly speaking.
One of its subordinate prefectures, Tacheng, physically surrounds another prefecture-level city (Karamay) as an enclave within its territory. Karamay City itself also has an exclave (Dushanzi District) which is separated from the rest of Karamay, by an exclave of Ili Autonomous Prefecture itself (Kuytun City).
Sound confusing? It is! Check out the three maps below. The white “hole” in the middle of Tacheng Prefecture is Karamay City (mostly), while Ili’s Kuytun City is shaded as the orange-colored district #2 in the first image.
Enclaves and exclaves are generally rare in China, except in Xinjiang, where they’re very common.
Sansha City is also…special 三沙市也很特殊
Hainan Province’s Sansha City is probably the weirdest prefecture-level city on my list, as it was created to govern and administer disputed islands and areas of the South China Sea. As such, it has the largest area and the smallest population of any prefecture-level city in China: just ~1500 residents for an area of 2 million square kilometers (99.9% of it water). Almost all of the residents live on Yongxing Island, part of the Xishan Island Chain (also called Paracel Islands) also claimed by Vietnam (and Taiwan for that matter).
Sansha used to be a county-level entity that was directly administered by Hainan Province with no prefecture in-between (which is normal for Hainan - more on that below). When it was upgraded to a prefecture-level city in 2012, it caused quite an international media uproar, although practically speaking, nothing changed about Sansha administratively.
Sansha’s Nansha District and Xisha District use something called a “Management Area” (管理区) at what would normally be the sub-district/town level, for instance the “Yongle Archipelago Management Area” (永乐群岛管理区).
These “Management Areas” are then further broken down into residential communities 社区, just like in regular urban areas. I figured I’d mention it here, rather than create a separate section just for Management Areas later in this essay.
Chapter 3: Sub-Prefecture Cities 副地级市
Sub-prefecture cities occupy a space between prefecture-level cities and county-level cities. Strictly speaking, they are county-level cities, often (but not always) subordinate to a prefecture-level city, but they’re also a half-level higher. There are around 50 sub-prefecture level cities in China, spread seemingly randomly throughout the country.
Sub-prefecture is not a formal administrative designation. They exist because China’s public servant system designates 12 levels, from the most entry-level (level 12) to the Premier of China (level 1). Because there are only 5 formal government administrative levels (national, province, prefecture, county, town) but 12 public servant levels, there has to be some way to split some administrative levels into additional bands. Officials at a sub-prefecture level city are 副厅局级, which is level 6 in the 12-level system, while officials at a ‘normal’ county-level city are 正县处级, which is level 7 in the 12-level system. As far as I can tell, this is the only difference between a sub-prefecture city and a regular county-level city.
A relatively well-known example of a sub-prefecture level city is Kunshan, the prosperous small city sandwiched between Shanghai and Suzhou. Kunshan generally is part of Suzhou for census and adminstrative purposes, but is in fact a sub-prefecture city, placing its public servants at a slightly higher level than any of Suzhou’s other county-level cities like Taicang or Zhangjiagang.
Chapter 4: Oddities at the County/District Level
After prefecture-level, the next level down is the county level. We already discussed the “normal” units at this level, which included the district, the county-level city, and the county. But the lower the level, the more oddities and special cases appear, so this is where it starts to get really messy.
Province Direct-Governed County-Level 省直辖县级行政区
I mentioned above that sub-prefecture level cities are often (but not always) subordinate to prefecture-level cities. However, there is also a short list of sub-prefecture cities that don’t have a parent prefecture, making them the uncommon county-level cities directly governed by the provincial government (省直辖县级行政区).
If you’ve heard of this phenomenon before - county-level cities that are not part of any prefecture - you probably heard about it in Hainan. Hainan Province is an island in southern China with 15 provincial directly-governed county-level units, (and only 4 prefecture-level cities) making it the most common structure in Hainan.
Back in 2015, Hainan’s Danzhou City was upgraded from a provincial direct-governed county-level city to a prefecture-level city, joining Sanya, Haikou, and Sansha to become Hainan’s 4th prefecture-level city. In keeping with the weirdness of Hainan’s administrative structure, Danzhou also violates the norms for prefecture-level cities by having no Counties, County-level cities, or Districts. Instead it has only directly-governed Towns, an uncommon feature it shares with just 3 other cities: Dongguan, Zhongshan, and Jiayuguan.
All of Xinjiang’s county-level cities managed by the XPCC are also considered to be provincial directly-governed county-level units (as the XPCC is itself not an administrative unit).
Direct provincial-managed counties are exceedingly rare outside of Hainan and Xinjiang. There are only four outside of Hainan and Xinjiang that I could find in my research: three in Hubei (Xiantao, Tianmen, and Qianjiang) and one in Henan (Jiyuan).
Those three cities in Hubei were supposed to merge into a single prefecture-level city called Jianghan around the year 2000, but some interesting political manuevering prevented this from happening, leading to the current situation.
Province-Managed Forestry District 省直辖林区
Hubei also has a single direct province-managed “forestry district”. The Shennongjia Forestry District (神农架林区) is a county-level administrative unit in Western Hubei administed by the province directly. To my knowledge, this is the only county-level “Forestry District” in China. On maps, it will often show up next to prefecture-level entities, which could mislead into the impression that it’s a prefecture-level entity, but the provincial documents are quite clear that Shennongjia is a county, not a city.
Ethnic Districts 民族区
Unlike ethnic towns or ethnic villages, which are reasonably common, at least in certain parts of the country, ethnic districts are rare. In fact, there are only five of them in China. This refers to a urban city district (i.e., on the county-level) that is designated for a certain ethnic minority in China, like an urban version of an autonomous county. They don’t appear to enjoy any specific self-governance privileges, unlike autonomous ethnic prefectures or autonomous ethnic counties.
Of the five ethnic districts in China, four of them are Hui ethnic districts, found in Hohhot, Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Luoyang, respectively. The fifth ethnic district is for the Daur people, in Qiqihar.
Districts That Aren’t Really Districts 非区之区
Sometimes, something is called a “district” when it’s more of an geographic economic zone, not an administrative one. For example, take Suzhou New District (高新区) which was created by land taken from three different districts of western Suzhou City and has a bunch of “government” offices, but not a People’s Congress or a People’s Government, so is still officially part of Huqiu District (you can confirm this also by reviewing maps from the Ministry of Civil Affairs). Similarly, Suzhou Industrial Park is not a district, although it looks an awful lot like one at first blush; it is actually part of Suzhou’s Gusu District. China is full of industrial parks and development zones with a similar structure. But sometimes they ARE real districts (like Pudong New District). So be careful.
A similar case is “Dapeng New Area” (大鹏新区) in Shenzhen. Although Dapeng has some of its own government administrative departments, its population and GDP still count towards Shenzhen’s Longgang District. Dapeng New Area is therefore an exclave of Longgang District (Pingshan District divides them). This can be easily confirmed by looking at Longgang District in Baidu Maps.
Da Hinggan Ling Prefecture’s “Management Zones” 大兴安岭的管理区
As mentioned above in the section on Prefectures, Da Hingan Ling in Heilongjiang has not yet been converted to a Prefecture-level City. Additionally, its administrative structure is fairly odd: it has 0 city districts, only 1 county-level city (Mohe) 2 counties (Tahe and Huma) and 4 “Management Zones”. Of these management zones, two are not actually their own administrative units, but de facto governed by Huma County.
The other two (Songling Management Zone and Jiagedaqi Management Zone) are governed directly by Da Hinggan Ling Prefecture, but confusingly are also currently claimed by the Oroqen Autonomous Banner in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, where they are desginated as districts, namely: Songling District and Jiagedaqi District.
Historically, these regions were part of Oroqen Banner, but were handed over to Da Hingan Ling Prefecture for forestry development in 1964. By 1970, it was planned for Hulunbuir to become part of Heilongjiang, but this plan was later abandoned. In 1979, Songling and Jiagedaqi began paying taxes to Oroqen Banner, although they continued to be administered by Da Hinggan Ling. In 1984 Oroqen Banner began asking for these two regions to be returned to its own jurisdiction, a position it has maintained over the decades, but which has never come to fruition.
Liuzhi Special District 六枝特区
There is just ONE “special district” in the country, the Liuzhi Special District, governed by Liupanshui Prefecture-Level city, Guizhou. It was established as a “special district” in the 1960s so the regional government could set up and operate a coal mine there. The name was just…never changed later. Based on how rural the area is, it would surely be a County, were it not a “Special District”. Anyway, Liuzhi is another unique case.
A District Shared by a Prefecture-level City and its County-level City
Jalainur District (扎赉诺尔区) of Manzhouli City, Hulunbuir City, Inner Mongolia is one of a kind. Manzhouli is a county-level city, thus it cannot organize its subordinate units into districts; in principle it should have only sub-districts, towns, and townships. However, Manzhouli has organized five of its sub-districts and one town into a district called “Jalainur District”…which Hulunbuir actually governs. So…Jalainur is administered by Hulunbuir City, but its population and other statistics count towards Manzhouli City. Weird.
Some Cities Don’t Use Districts at All
Above, I mentioned Danzhou City doesn’t have districts, only directly-governed Towns. The other three cities that do this are Dongguan City in Guangdong, Zhoushan City in Zhejiang, and Jiayuguan City in Gansu.
Jiayuguan’s entire population is just 300k people, so this isn’t too unwieldly, but the other cities actually have more people living there, and so an additional organizational tool is needed, in this case the 片区, which just translates as “Area”. 片区 are only used for city-planning purposes in Dongguan, Zhoushan, and Danzhou, and don’t have any government apparatus attached to them.
Langfang’s “Northern 3 Counties”
Langfang City, Hebei, has the most significant exclave/enclave situation in China, in terms of population affected. Three of its county-level units (Sanhe County-level City, Xianghe County, and Dachang Hui Autonomous County) are fully separated from the rest of Langfang by Beijing and Tianjin. These so-called “northern three counties” (北三县) of Langfang have a combined population of about 1.5 million people, living as Hebei enclave sandwiched by Beijing and Tianjin.
Chapter 5: Sub-County Level 副县级
Okay, so at the sub-county level, there’s actually only one unique administrative unit to mention here…the “sub-county office”, or 区公所. This used to be a much more common administrative unit, used to facilitate governance of rural areas, providing a bridge between the county-level and the town-level. I couldn’t find a clear explanation for why they have been phased out, except that it eliminated a layer of bureaucracy. As the old sub-county units were eliminated, they were converted into Towns or Townships, or merged into other nearby Towns.
By the early 2000s there were only about twenty active sub-county offices left in China, and as of 2024, there appear to be just two left:
Zhaojiapeng Sub-County Office (赵家蓬区公所) in Zhuolu County, Zhangjiakou City, Hebei
Kuiyibage Sub-County Office (奎依巴格区公所) in Zepu County, Kashgar Prefecture.
Thus, Kashgar, one of the last seven remaining prefectures (地区) that hasn’t been converted to a prefecture-level city, also has one of the last two sub-county offices - a rarity wrapped in an oddity.
Chapter 6: Town-level Oddities 镇级
At the town level, the Chinese formal administrative structure includes Ethnic Towns and Ethnic Townships (民族镇 and 民族乡). In contrast to other administrative districts based on ethnic minorities, these are not autonomous or semi-autonomous units, and do not use the “自治“ nomenclature (e.g., 自治州、自治县、etc.).
There are hundreds of ethnic towns and ethnic townships in China (959 in 2021, according to Wikipedia). Among these, ethnic townships are far more common than ethnic towns. I’m unable to find any evidence ethnic towns or townships have distinct administrative differences versus regular Towns and Townships, other than that they have a high concentration of a certain ethnic minority group.
Ethnic Towns could be declared via an application process until 1992, at which point the system for establishing an ethnic town was abolished, which is why there are a lot fewer of those than Ethnic Townships.
Ethnic townships, on the other hand, can be found just about everywhere. The most common flavor of ethnic township is the Hui ethnic township (回族乡). The 12-million-ish Muslim Hui people scattered all over China often formed their own close-knit communities in various cities throughout central and eastern China that preserved the designation of “ethnic township” to the present day. Any region could have a Hui ethnic township.
Chapter 7: Village-Level 村级
Almost done. Besides the common urban residential and rural villages that I covered in Part 1, and Mongolian gacha, which I covered above, the most common oddities at the village level are state-run agricultural production units.
State-Run Agricultural Production Units 国营农场
These are usually seen at the township or village level in border regions in Northeast and Northwest China, although they could show up anywhere. Historically, they provided a buffer region along the border and were managed/staffed by military units, or the XPCC (many of them still are today). Back in the 50s and 60s, they were explicitly part of the 农业垦殖 program (abbreviated as 农垦) meaning reclamation and cultivation of wasteland for agriculture).
Today these farms still have citizens living within the production unit who count towards the population of the governing city. Unless you go to a very rural border region, you’ll probably never encounter one of these. But they exist!
The extensive list of state-run agricultural production units I’ve seen includes:
Farms
Regiment Farms
Dairy Farms
Seed Farms
Orchards
Forests
Ranches
Grasslands
…and many more I’m sure
Concluding Comments
Okay, that’s all. This essay is way too long for being dedicated to such a niche subject, but I hadn’t seen such a essay in English becuase, so I guess someone had to do it! (Really though? Did they really?)
If you made it to the end, hopefully it was worth it? If you liked this content, remember I wrote it mostly in service of having a handy reference guide to link to every time I mention a Chinese administrative district in my travel writing, especially when it comes to some of the commonly-misunderstood ones like “prefecture-level cities” or “autonomous counties”. I can’t claim to have comprehensively covered every weird or non-standard administrative feature in China, so if you’re aware of something I missed, feel free to let me know in the comments and I’ll consider doing a Part 3 in the future. (just kidding, no I won’t)
Please do read some of my “regular” content too - check out this recent post exploring China’s urbanization rate, or this story of modernity in the Zhejiang countryside from a guesthouse owner. Thanks for reading!
Man, you are a beast, and thanks for telling me things I don’t even know. That Kunshan being a sub-prefecture level thing really got me.
This is amazing. You have far more knowledge of Chinese administrative structure than a normal Chinese citizen. Those things are only slightly touched by textbook, but more comprehensive and instructive. I need to bookmark this article for future reference.