Counties of Taiwan

County 縣 Xiàn
Category	Unitary State
Location	Taiwan
Number	13
Populations	12,506 (Lienchiang) – 1,291,474 (Changhua)
Areas	11.4307 square miles (29.605 km2) (Lienchiang) – 4,106.4360 square miles (10,635.620 km2) (Hualien)
Government	County government, National Government
Subdivisions	Township, County-controlled city

A county (Chinese: 縣; pinyin: xiàn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: koān) is an administrative division unit in Taiwan. Under the administrative structure of Taiwan, it is with the same level of a provincial city. Historically the counties were under the jurisdiction of provinces, but after the streamlining of provinces in 1998, they are all directly led by the central government.

The first administrative divisions named "county" (縣) was first established in 1661 by the Kingdom of Tungning. The later ruler Qing empire inherited this type of administrative divisions. With the increase of Han Chinese population in Taiwan, the number of counties also grew by time. By the end of Qing era, there were 11 counties in Taiwan.

Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. The hierarchy of divisions also incorporated into the Japanese system in the period when Taiwan under Japanese rule. By the end of World War II in 1945, Taiwan was divided into eight (8) prefectures (州 and 廳). The prefectures were reformed into eight counties (縣) with the same name under Taiwan Province of the Republic of China. Their roman spellings were also changed to reflect the official language shift from Japanese to Mandarin Chinese, but characters remained the same. Note that most of the Japanese prefectural cities were reformed to provincial cities and are not a part of counties.

...
Wikipedia