Districts of the People's Republic of China

Municipalities (Chinese市 辖区/市 辖区, Pinyin shìxiáqū ) are administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China at the county level. Currently, there are 861 districts (as of February 9, 2013 ). This number will grow in the future, because every now and then county-level cities and districts are converted into districts. Districts are, as a rule, the prefecture-level cities, so the district level. In the case of the four -administered cities in China (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing) but they report directly to the provincial level, which has renounced here to install a district level ever.

Externally, municipalities often act like independent cities ( partly indeed they were "independent" county-level cities ) and like them, they often include the area around the actual urban agglomeration, ie rural, agricultural areas.

Criterion for the conversion of districts and towns into districts, in the first case, the degree of urbanization, combined with the proximity to the center of a prefecture-level city, in the second case, the actual or expected development of a merger of the urban catchment areas of distinguishable independent city with the / the central city district / s of a prefecture-level city.

Ethnic Townships

The five ethnic districts are a special case in the administrative division of the People's Republic of China, marks Each of these administrative units satisfies all the conditions for the establishment of an autonomous circuit. However, since all affected urban administrative units are to a large extent and within the centers of large district -free cities, not circles but had to municipalities could be built after the administrative order. The Law on Ethnic Regional Autonomy now looks again at the county level only autonomous counties, not autonomous municipalities before. This situation led to the consequence that the affected municipalities - like the nationality communities - lead the ethnic designation in the name and also have some specified in each individual case special rights, but do not belong to the autonomous administrative divisions and have not the same rights as autonomous counties. The five ethnic districts are:

• Heilongjiang Province: Municipality Meilisi the Daur (梅里斯 达斡尔 族 区), Qiqihar City;

• Municipality Chanhe Hui (瀍 河 回族 区), Luoyang City;
• Municipality Guancheng Hui (管 城 回族 区), Zhengzhou City;
• Municipality Shunhe Hui (顺河 回族 区), Kaifeng City;

• Municipality Huimin (回民 区), Hohhot City.