Province-level administrative divisions | |
---|---|
Category | Communist One-party state |
Location |
People's Republic of China (PRC) Republic of China (Taiwan) |
Number | 34 (33 governed by People's Republic of China (PRC), 2 streamlined provinces controlled by the opposing Republic of China (Taiwan)) |
Populations | 552,300 (Macau) – 104,303,132 (Guangdong) |
Areas | 31 km2 (12 sq mi) (Macau) – 730,000 km2 (280,000 sq mi) (Qinghai) |
Government | Single-Party Government SARs: 1 country, 2 systems Provincial government (Republic of China (Taiwan) free area that is not controlled by the People's Republic of China (PRC) only) |
Subdivisions | Sub-provincial city, Prefecture |
province-level administrative divisions | |||||||||
Chinese name | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Simplified Chinese | 省级行政区 | ||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 省級行政區 | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
province | |||||||||
Chinese | 省 | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
Tibetan name | |||||||||
Tibetan | ཞིང་ཆེན། | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
Zhuang name | |||||||||
Zhuang | Swngj | ||||||||
Mongolian name | |||||||||
Mongolian script | ᠮᠤᠵᠢ | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
Uyghur name | |||||||||
Uyghur |
ئۆلكە
|
||||||||
|
Provincial-level administrative divisions (Chinese: 省级行政区; pinyin: shěng-jí xíngzhèngqū) or first-level administrative divisions (一级行政区; yī-jí xíngzhèngqū), are the highest-level Chinese administrative divisions. There are 33 such divisions, classified as 22 provinces (Chinese: 省; pinyin: shěng), four municipalities, five autonomous regions, and two Special Administrative Regions. This does not include Taiwan Province, which has been administered by the Republic of China (Taiwan) since 1949.
Note that every province (except Hong Kong and Macau, the two special administrative regions) has a Communist Party of China provincial committee (Chinese: 省委; pinyin: shěngwěi), headed by a secretary (Chinese: 书记; pinyin: shūjì). The committee secretary is in effective charge of the province, rather than the nominal governor of the provincial government.
The government of each standard province (Chinese: 省; pinyin: shěng) is nominally led by a provincial committee, headed by a secretary. The committee secretary is first-in-charge of the province; second-in-command is the governor of the provincial government.
China claims the island of Taiwan and its surrounding islets, including Penghu, as "Taiwan Province", though Taiwan has not been under control of a government that ruled from mainland China since 1949, when the Republic of China lost the mainland to the PRC. (Kinmen and the Matsu Islands are claimed by the PRC as part of its Fujian Province. Pratas and Itu Aba are claimed by the PRC as part of Guangdong and Hainan provinces respectively.) The territory is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC, commonly called "Taiwan").