County-level city - Definition and Overview

A county-level city (县级市 Pinyin: xiànjí shì) is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions.

Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing counties. This process was halted in 1997.

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.

A sub-prefecture-level city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of prefecture-level cities. Examples include Jiyuan (Henan province), Xiantao (Hubei), and Golmud (Qinghai).

See also

• County of China
• Provincial city
• Political divisions of China