County-level city
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| County-level city 县级市 Xiànjíshì | |
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| Category | Third level administrative division of a unitary state |
| Location | People's Republic of China |
| Found in | Prefectures, Provinces |
| Number | 398 (395 controlled, 3 claimed) (as of 17 April 2026) |
| Populations | 15,124 (Tsona) – 2,054,703 (Puning) |
| Areas | 89 km2 (34 sq mi) (Linxia) – 119,165 km2 (46,010 sq mi) (Golmud) |
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| Subdivisions | |
| County-level city | |||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 县级市 | ||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 縣級市 | ||||||||
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| Tibetan name | |||||||||
| Tibetan | རྫོང་རིམ་པ་གྲོང་ཁྱེར། | ||||||||
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| Mongolian name | |||||||||
| Mongolian script | ᠬᠣᠰᠢᠭᠤᠨ ᠤ ᠡᠩ ᠲᠡᠢ ᠬᠣᠲᠠ | ||||||||
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| Uyghur name | |||||||||
| Uyghur | ناھىيىسى دەرىجىلىك شەھەر | ||||||||
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A county-level city (Chinese: 县级市) is a county-level administrative division of the People's Republic of China. County-level cities have judicial but no legislative rights over their own local law and are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions.
A county-level city is a "city" (市; shì) and "county" (县; xiàn) that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. As such, it is simultaneously a city, which is a municipal entity, and a county, which is an administrative division of a prefecture. Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing denser populated counties.
County-level cities are not "cities" in the strictest sense of the word, since they usually contain rural areas many times the size of their urban, built-up area. This is because the counties that county-level cities have replaced are themselves large administrative units containing towns, villages and farmland. To distinguish a "county-level city" from its actual urban area (the traditional meaning of the word "city"), the term "市区" (shìqū) or "urban area", is used.
Comparable territorial divisions in other countries
[edit]While the idea of a "city" being a unit consisting of several "towns" is not a common one in English-speaking world, a somewhat similar naming convention is used for local government areas in some parts of Australia. For example, in New South Wales such a unit may often be called a "city" (rather than a traditional "shire"), and consist of "towns". E.g. City of Blue Mountains is made of a number of towns (Katoomba, Springwood, etc.).
List
[edit]| Administrative divisions of China |
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History: before 1912, 1912–49, 1949–present Administrative division codes |
As of 3 April 2023, there are 408 county-level cities in total:
Sub-prefectural cities
[edit]A sub-prefectural city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of prefecture-level cities. Examples include, Xiantao (Hubei), Qianjiang (Hubei), Tianmen (Hubei) and Jiyuan (Henan).
