County-administered city

A county-administered city (Chinese: 縣轄市; pinyin: xiànxiáshì; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: koān-hat-chhī)), is a unit of administrative division in Taiwan. Under the administrative structure of Taiwan, it is with the same level of a township or a district. Such cities are administrated by counties. It is also the lowest-level city of Taiwan, below a provincial city and a special municipality. There are 14 county-administered cities currently.

History

The first administrative divisions entitled "city" were established in the 1920s when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. At this time cities were under the jurisdiction of prefectures. After the World War II, nine (9) out of eleven (11) prefectural cities established by the Japanese government were reform into provincial cities. The reform was based on the Laws on the City Formation (市組織法) of the Republic of China.

In this reform, the populations of Hualien (Karenkō) and Yilan (Giran) were too low to became a provincial city, but they are also much more important than other urban townships. Thus the special administrative division type is created in Scheme on the Local Rules in Various Counties and Cities of Taiwan Province (臺灣省各縣市實施地方自治綱要). In this time, a county is divided into county-administered cities and county-administered townships. A county-administered township is divided into urban townships and urban townships. The level of a county-administered city is higher than a township.

In 1951, a large scale administrative division reorganization took place in Taiwan. The size of counties shrink and the county-administered districts were abolished. This puts county-administered cities and townships into the same level in the hierarchy. Four provincial cities were also downgraded to county-administered cities after this reorganization. Since the county-administered cities are based on the law for Taiwan Province, Kinmen County and Lienchiang County under Fukien do not have any city under their jurisdiction.

The population criterion was originally 50,000 in the 1940s, but was raised to 100,000 in 1959, again in 1977 to 150,000, and in 2015 it was lower back to 100,000. Under the current. Currently, the Local Government Act of the Ministry of the Interior applies for the creation of a provincial city, in which a city needs to have a population between 100,000 and 500,000 and occupies major political, economical and cultural roles.^[1] Note that not all existing county-administered cities are qualified for the population test, they were built for historical reasons.

Current county-administered cities

There are currently fourteen(14) provincial cities:

Each county-administered cities has its own self-governed bodies. The self-governed bodies (executive and legislature) regulated by the Local Government Act are: A City Office (市公所) and a City Council (市民代表大會). The mayor (市長) and city representatives (市民代表) shall be directly elected by the people reside in the city territory. A county-administered city are further divided into urban villages (里).

Timeline

Below, unless noted otherwise in parenthesis, the newly created cities were towns that exceeded the 150,000 criteria.

Populous Townships

Townships with population more than 90,000, close to the upgrading criterion (as of March 2017)

• Caotun (草屯鎮; 98,330)
• Zhudong (竹東鎮; 96,877)
• Hemei (和美鎮; 91,159)

See also

• Administrative divisions of Taiwan
• Political divisions of Taiwan (1895–1945)
• Cities of Japan
• County (Taiwan)
• Township (Taiwan)

References

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