PRC Prefectural-Level Divisions - Intro

PREFECTURAL-LEVEL DIVISIONS 地级行政区

中华人民共和国

On the top level, the People’s Republic of China administers:

• 22 provinces 省• 4 municipalities 直辖市• 5 Autonomous Regions 自治区• 2 Special Administrative Regions 特别行政区

These top-level divisions are then further subdivided into different types of prefectural-level divisions:

• sub-provincial cities 副省级市• prefecture-level cities 地级市• prefectures 地区• autonomous prefectures 自治州• leagues 盟 (Inner Mongolia 内蒙古)

In this course, you can learn their locations within their respective provinces.

On the third level of administration, there are nearly 3000 county-level divisions. A few of these do not belong to any particular prefecture-level division, so you can learn their locations as well.

The county level divisions are:• sub-prefecture-level cities 富地级市*• county-level cities 县级市• counties 县• autonomous counties 自治县• forestry district 林区• economic development zone 经济开发区• districts 区

*These enjoy more administrative powers than counties, but less than prefectures.

The most common type of subdivision, by far, is the prefecture-level city. So by completing this course, you will know the location and pronunciation of almost every city in China.

In this course, you can write the name of the division in:• English• Hanyu pinyin 汉语拼音 (diacritics)• Hanyu pinyin 汉语拼音 (numbers)• Simplified Chinese 简体字

The type of division (e.g. prefecture-level city, etc.) is shown as a text attribute.

You can write either the official name or just the normal name, in English or pinyin. See example on the next page.

For Garzê, Sichuan, you can answer with the following:

• Gānzī Zàngzú Zìzhìzhōu• gan1 zi1 zang4 zu2 zi4 zhi4 zhou1• Gānzī• gan1 zi1• Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture• Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture• Garzê• Ganzi• 甘孜藏族自治州• 甘孜

However, there are hundreds of cities and therefore it would take me hours to add shì to each one, so the official names are not accepted for cities of any kind. See example on the next page.

For Shijiazhuang, or for any other city, be it prefecture-level or county-level, you can answer with the following:

• Shíjiāzhuāng• shi2 jia1 zhuang1• Shijiazhuang• 石家庄

Don’t worry - you won’t have to remember all that! The accepted alternate answers are shown for every division when you click ‘more’.

When you see a word in brackets beside an autonomous prefecture, this is the name of the ethnic group to which the prefecture is designated, for example:

• Yánbiān (Korean)• Dêqên / Díqìng (Tibetan)

The different types of provincial-level division are subdivided slightly differently, but you’ll find out more about that in each multimedia level.

All in all, this course teaches the locations of 474 divisions.