Category Unitary State Number 3 | Location Taiwan | |
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Populations 270,883 (Chiayi) – 431,988 (Hsinchu) Areas 40.1918 square miles (104.096 km) (Keelung) – 7,300 square miles (19,000 km) (Hsinchu) Government Local government, Central Government | ||
A provincial city (Chinese: 市; pinyin: shì; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: chhī) is an administrative division unit in Taiwan. Under the administrative structure of Taiwan, it is lesser in rank than a special municipality and is with the same level of a county. Historically the provincial cities were under the jurisdiction of provinces, but after the streamline of provinces in 1998, they are all directly led by the central government.
Contents
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. Their roman spellings are also changed to reflect the official language shift from Japanese to Mandarin Chinese, but characters remain the same.
The reform was based on the Laws on the City Formation (市組織法) of the Republic of China. This law was passed in the early 20th century. The criteria for being a provincial city included being the provincial capital as well as having a population of over 200,000, or over 100,000 if the city had particular significance in politics, economics, and culture. The division reform in 1945 had some compromises between the Japanese and the Chinese systems, some of the cities with population under the criteria were still be established as provincial cities.
After the government of the Republic of China relocated to Taipei, Taiwan in 1949, the population criterion for provincial cities was raised to 500,000 in the 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), which was passed in 1981. It was later raised again to 600,000.
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 500,000 and 1,250,000 and occupies major political, economical and cultural roles. Note that all three existing provincial cities are not qualified for the population test, they were built for historical reasons.
Current Cities
There are currently three provincial cities:
Their self-governed bodies (executive and legislature) regulated by the Local Government Act are: