County-controlled city

A county-administered city/ county-controlled city (Chinese: 縣轄市; pinyin: xiànxiáshì) is a third level administrative division of Taiwan. On the same level as a Taiwanese township, it is the lowest-level city of Taiwan, below provincial city and special municipality. There are 17 county-controlled cities currently. A county-controlled city has urban villages (里) directly under it.

The two criteria of gaining county-administered city status:

• population between 150,000 and 500,000^[1]
• advanced industry and commerce, sufficient funds, and advanced infrastructure

The population criterion was originally 50,000 in the 1940s, but was raised to 100,000 in 1959, and again in 1977 to the present level.

At first, in late January 1946, there were only two county-controlled cities: Hualien and Yilan, which were both prefecture-controlled cities (州轄市) under Japanese Rule. (The ROC government did not create such cities on the Mainland before they relocated to Taiwan.) Currently Chiayi County has the most county-controlled cities (2). For current county-controlled cities, see the table below:

County-administered cities in Taiwan

• 

  Changhua

• 

  Douliu

• 

  Hualien

• 

  Magong

• 

  Miaoli

• 

  Nantou

• 

  Pingtung

• 

  Puzi

• 

  Taibao

• 

  Taitung

• 

  Yilan

• 

  Zhubei

Timeline

Below, unless noted otherwise in parenthesis, the newly created cities were towns that exceeded the 150,000 criteria.

Lienchiang and Kinmen County do not have any city.

See also

• Administrative divisions of the Republic of China

Reference