Counties of China
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| County 县 Xiàn | |
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| Category | Third level administrative division of a unitary state |
| Location | People's Republic of China |
| Found in | Prefectures, Provinces |
| Number | 1,319 (1,307 controlled, 11 claimed) (as of 2023) |
| Government |
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| Subdivisions | |
| County | |||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 县 | ||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | |||||||||
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| Tibetan name | |||||||||
| Tibetan | རྫོང་། (formerly | ||||||||
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| Zhuang name | |||||||||
| Zhuang | Yen | ||||||||
| Korean name | |||||||||
| Hangul | 현 | ||||||||
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| Mongolian name | |||||||||
| Mongolian Cyrillic | Шянь | ||||||||
| Mongolian script | ᠰᠢᠶᠠᠨ | ||||||||
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| Uyghur name | |||||||||
| Uyghur | ناھىيە | ||||||||
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| Manchu name | |||||||||
| Manchu script | ᡥᡳᠶᠠᠨ | ||||||||
| Möllendorff | hiyan | ||||||||
| Kazakh name | |||||||||
| Kazakh | اۋدان аудан audan | ||||||||
| Kyrgyz name | |||||||||
| Kyrgyz | وودان оодан oodan | ||||||||
| Administrative divisions of China |
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History: before 1912, 1912–49, 1949–present Administrative division codes |
Counties (simplified Chinese: 县; traditional Chinese:
The term xian is sometimes translated as "district" or "prefecture" when put in the context of Chinese history.
History
[edit]Xian have existed since the Warring States period and were set up nationwide by the Qin dynasty.[1][2] The number of counties in China proper gradually increased from dynasty to dynasty. As Qin Shi Huang reorganized the counties after his unification, there were about 1,000. Under the Eastern Han dynasty, the number of counties increased to above 1,000. About 1400 existed when the Sui dynasty abolished the commandery level (
In Imperial China, the county was a significant administrative unit because it marked the lowest level of the imperial bureaucratic structure;[citation needed] in other words, it was the lowest level that the government reached. Government below the county level was often undertaken through informal non-bureaucratic means, varying between dynasties. The head of a county was the magistrate, who oversaw both the day-to-day operations of the county as well as civil and criminal cases.
During the Republican period, counties were the second level administrative divisions of its provinces. After the Chinese Civil War, counties became subordinate to prefectural level cities while the previous structure is retained. The counties became directly governed by the Executive Yuan after the provinces became streamlined in 1998, but they were fully abolished in 2018.
Autonomous counties
[edit]Autonomous counties (
There are 117 autonomous counties in mainland China.
Government
[edit]As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is central to directing government policy in mainland China, every level of administrative division has a local CCP committee. A county's[clarification needed] is called the secretary (
See also
[edit]- Counties of China — historical
- List of counties in the People's Republic of China
- List of county-level divisions of China
- History of the administrative divisions of China
- Attached county, a former sort of xian in late Imperial China
- County (Taiwan)
References
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ^ Hsu, Cho-yun (2012) [2006]. China: A New Cultural History. Translated by Baker, Timothy D. Jr.; Duke, Michael S. Columbia University Press. p. 102. ISBN 9780231159203.
- ^ Goodman, David S.G., ed. (2015). Handbook of the Politics of China. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. p. 159. ISBN 9781782544364.
Sources
[edit]- Ch'u, T'ung-tsu (1962), Local Government in China under the Ch'ing, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press