Villages of China

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The village (Chinese: 村, pinyin: cun) in China serves as a fundamental organizational unit for its rural population(census, mail system). Basic local divisions like neighborhoods and communities are not informal like in the West, but have defined boundaries and designated heads (one per area). In 2000, China's densely populated villages (>100 persons/ha) had a population greater than 500 million and covered more than 2 million square kilometers, or more than 20% of China's total area (Ellis 2004).

In general, urban areas are organized into neighborhood committees (居民委员会 jūmínwěiyuánhuì or simply 居委会 jūwěihuì), while rural areas are organized into village committees (村民委员会 cūnmínwěiyuánhuì or simply 村委会 cūnwěihuì) or villager groups (村民小组 cūnmínxiǎozǔ). A "village" in this case can either be a natural village (自然村 zìráncūn), or one that spontaneously and naturally exists, or an administrative village (行政村 xíngzhèngcūn), which is a bureaucratic entity.

Instead of neighborhood committees and sub-districts, a city could have:

• neighborhood (居民区 jūmínqū)
• community (社区 shèqū)

[edit] References

• Ellis, E.C. 2004. Long-term ecological changes in the densely populated rural landscapes of China. Pages 303-320 in R. S. DeFries, G. P. Asner, and R. A. Houghton, editors. Ecosystems and Land Use Change. American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC.