Autonomous areas of China

Autonomous administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China are specific areas associated with one or more ethnic minorities that are designated as autonomous within the People's Republic of China (PRC). These areas are recognized in the PRC's constitution and are nominally given a number of rights not accorded to other administrative divisions. For example, Tibetan minorities in Autonomous regions are granted rights and support not given to the Han Chinese, such as fiscal and medical subsidies.

The PRC's autonomous administrative divisions may be found in the first (or top) to third levels of its national administrative divisions thus:

Although not named as autonomous areas, some third-level settlements and areas that are identified as county-level cities and county-level districts enjoy the same autonomy as autonomous areas. At the fourth ("township") level, 1 ethnic sumu (the Evenk Ethnic Sumu) and over 270 ethnic townships also exist, but are not considered to be autonomous and do not enjoy the laws pertaining to the larger ethnic autonomous areas.

As these autonomous areas were created by the PRC, they are not recognised by the Republic of China on Taiwan which ruled Mainland China before the PRC's creation.

The names of most of the PRC's autonomous areas are made from linking together:

For instance:

In the Chinese name of the administrative area, the nationality name is always suffixed with -族 ("nationality"), unless the nationality name consists of more than two syllable (e.g. Xinjiang Uygur /Wéi'wǔ'ěr AR) or the geographical name contains the nationality name (e.g. Inner Mongolia and Tibet ARs). This distinction is not reflected in translation into English.

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