Administrative Divisions of The People's Republic of China - Ambiguity of The Word "city" in China

Ambiguity of The Word "city" in China

Due to the complexity of the administrative divisions, the Chinese word "市"(shì) or in English "city", has many different meanings.

By its political level, when a "city" is referred to, it can be a:

• LV 1 (provincial-level):

• Municipality of China, for example, Beijing

• LV 2 (prefecture-level):

• Sub-provincial city, for example, Shenyang
• Prefecture-level city, for example, Baoding

• LV 3 (county-level):

• Sub-prefecture-level city, for example, Jiyuan
• County-level city, for example, Yiwu

When used in the statistical data, the word "city" may have three different meanings:

• The area administrated by the city. For the municipality, the sub-provincial city, or the prefecture-level city, a "city" in this sense includes all of the counties, county-level cities, city districts that the city governed. For the Sub-prefecture-level city or the County-level city, it includes all of the subdistricts, towns and townships that it has.
• The area comprised by its the urban city districts and suburb city districts. The difference between the urban district and the suburb districts is that an urban district is only comprised by the subdistricts, while a suburb district also have towns and townships to govern rural areas. In some sense, this definition is approximately the metropolitan area. This definition is not applied to the sub-prefecture-level city and the county-level city since they do not have city districts under them.
• The urban area. Sometimes the urban area is referred as (市区 shìqū). For the municipality, the sub-provincial city, and the prefecture-level city, it is comprised by the urban city district and the adjacent subdistricts of the suburb city districts. For the sub-prefecture-level city and the county-level city, only central subdistricts are included. This definition is close to the strict meaning of "city" in western countries.

It is important to specify the definition of "city" when referring to statistical data of Chinese cities, otherwise confusion may arise. For example, Shanghai is the largest city in China by population in the urban area, but is smaller than Chongqing by the population within the administration area.