Prefecture-level city

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Administrative divisions of the
People's Republic of China
This article is part
of the series:
Political divisions of China
Province level
Provinces
Autonomous areas
Municipalities
Special administrative regions
Prefecture level
Prefectures
Autonomous prefectures
Prefecture-level cities
(incl. Sub-provincial cities)
Leagues
County level
Counties
Autonomous counties
County-level cities
(incl. Sub-prefecture-level cities)
Districts
Banners
Autonomous banners
Township level
Townships
Ethnic townships
Towns
Subdistricts
Sumu
Ethnic sumu
District public offices


A prefecture-level city (Chinese: 地级市; pinyin: dìjí shì; literally "region-level city") or prefecture-level municipality is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China, ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. Prefecture-level cities form the second level of the administrative structure (alongside prefectures, leagues and autonomous prefectures). Since the 1980s, prefecture-level cities have mostly replaced the prefecture administrative unit.

A prefecture-level city is not a "city" in the strictest sense of the term, but instead an administrative unit comprising, typically, both an urban core (a city in the strict sense) and surrounding rural or less-urbanized areas usually many times the size of the central, built-up core. Prefecture-level cities nearly always contain multiple counties, county-level cities, and other such sub-divisions. This results from the fact that the formerly predominant prefectures, which prefecture-level cities have mostly replaced, were themselves large administrative units containing cities, smaller towns, and rural areas. To distinguish a prefecture-level city from its actual urban area (city in the strict sense), the term 市区 shìqū ("urban area"), is used.

The first prefecture-level cities were created on 5 November 1983. Over the following two decades, prefecture-level cities have come to replace the vast majority of Chinese prefectures; the process is still ongoing.

Most provinces are composed entirely or nearly entirely of prefecture-level cities. Of the 22 provinces and 5 autonomous regions of China, only 3 provinces (Yunnan, Guizhou, Qinghai) and 2 autonomous regions (Xinjiang, Tibet) have more than three second-level or prefecture-level divisions that are not prefecture-level cities.

Criteria that a prefecture of China must meet to become a prefecture-level city:

  • An urban centre with a non-rural population over 250,000
  • gross output of value of industry of 200,000,000 RMB
  • the output of tertiary industry supersedes that of primary industry
  • Over 35% of the GDP

Baoding (Hebei Province), Zhoukou (Henan), Nanyang (Henan), and Linyi (Shandong) are the largest prefecture-level cities, superseding the population of Tianjin, the least populous municipality.

15 large prefecture-level cities have been granted the status of sub-provincial city, which gives them much greater autonomy.

A sub-prefecture-level city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of prefecture-level cities.

[edit] See also

In other languages