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County-level Cities




A county-level city () 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 ).


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