Chinese Empire

How China Was Divided for Governance

The Chinese empire was never a single undifferentiated territory. From the Qin unification of 221 BCE onward, the empire was divided into a hierarchy of administrative units, each with its own officials, each reporting upward to a central government. The shape of the divisions changed dramatically over the centuries. The Qin had thirty-six commanderies; the Tang had over three hundred prefectures; the Qing had twenty-four provinces plus a metropolitan region and several great dependencies. The history of how the empire was divided is one of the most important ways to understand the history of imperial China.

This article traces the major administrative divisions of imperial China from the Qin to the Qing. For the broader context, see our overview of provincial administration and our survey of Chinese government and bureaucracy.

The Qin and Han: Commanderies and Kingdoms

The Qin unification of 221 BCE was, in administrative terms, a clean break. The First Emperor, having abolished the feudal kingdoms of the Warring States, divided the empire into thirty-six commanderies (郡, jùn), each subdivided into a number of counties (縣, xiàn). The commandery was the basic unit of administration, with a centrally appointed commander (郡守) and a centrally appointed county magistrate (縣令) in each county.

The Han, founded in 202 BCE, preserved the Qin system but with one important modification. Alongside the commanderies, the Han emperor Gaozu enfeoffed a number of kingdoms (王國) to his relatives and meritorious generals, as a reward for their help in founding the dynasty. The kingdoms were gradually reduced in size and number as the central government reasserted control. By the reign of the Han emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BCE), most of the kingdoms had been abolished or reduced to insignificance, and the empire was effectively run through the commanderies. The Han commandery system set the pattern that subsequent dynasties would follow.

The Three Kingdoms, the Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties

The collapse of the Han in 220 CE, followed by the Three Kingdoms (220–280) and the long period of disunion that historians call the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–589), saw considerable variation in administrative practice. The Three Kingdoms preserved the Han commandery system in each of the three states (Wei, Shu, Wu), and the Western Jin briefly reunified China in 280 with a similar structure.

The long period of disunion saw the rise of new administrative forms. The non-Han states in the north — the Sixteen Kingdoms (304–439) — were often tribal confederations with little of the Qin-Han bureaucratic apparatus. The Northern Wei (386–534) made a serious effort to sinicise and to adopt a Tang-style administrative system in the fifth century. The southern dynasties preserved the Han-Jin commandery system in modified form, but their territories were smaller and their administration more concentrated. The Sui reunification of 589 was in part a project of administrative rationalisation.

The Sui and Tang: Circuits, Prefectures, and Counties

The Sui and Tang reorganised the empire into a three-tiered structure of circuits (道, dào), prefectures (州, zhōu or 府, fǔ), and counties (縣, xiàn). The Tang empire had perhaps fifty to sixty circuits, three hundred to four hundred prefectures, and fifteen hundred to two thousand counties. The circuit was originally a fiscal inspection region, not a unit of government, and the real work was done by the prefect and the county magistrate.

The Tang system is the ancestor of the modern Chinese province. The Tang circuits were sometimes grouped into larger regions, and the regional military governors (節度使, jiédùshǐ) in the late Tang accumulated the kind of power that the original circuit system was designed to prevent. The collapse of the Tang in 907 CE was in part a collapse of the central government’s ability to control the military governors, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907–979) that followed were a period of regional fragmentation.

The Song: Routes and the Loss of the North

The Song, founded in 960, inherited the Tang administrative structure but reorganised it. The Song divided the empire into roughly twenty-four routes (路, lù), a term that distinguished them from Tang circuits. The Song routes were real units of government, not just inspection regions, and they became the basis of the modern Chinese province.

The Song never controlled all of the territory that had been Tang China. The Sixteen Prefectures — a strip of northern territory including modern Beijing — were ceded to the Khitan Liao in 938, and the Song never recovered them. The Song lost the rest of the north to the Jurchen Jin in 1127, and the court fled south to establish the Southern Song (1127–1279) with a capital at Lin’an (modern Hangzhou).

The Yuan: The First Provinces

The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), founded by the Mongols under Kublai Khan, made the decisive innovation. The Yuan divided the empire into a small number of large branches or provinces (行省, xíngshěng) — the term literally means “moving Secretariat.” The Yuan had perhaps twelve branches or provinces, each one much larger than a Tang circuit or a Song route. The Yuan provinces were administrative units of the central government, not autonomous regions. The Yuan system is the ancestor of the modern Chinese province. The Yuan system is treated in our survey of Mongol and Manchu rule, and in our Yuan Dynasty in practice.

The Ming: Provinces of Roughly Equal Size

The Ming, founded in 1368, inherited the Yuan system and standardised it. The Ming divided China proper into thirteen provinces (later eighteen), each of roughly comparable size, plus the two metropolitan regions of Beijing and Nanjing. The provinces were governed by three officials reporting separately to the capital: the provincial administration commissioner (布政使, bùzhèngshǐ), the provincial military commissioner (都指揮使, dūzhǐhuīshǐ), and the provincial surveillance commissioner (按察使, àncháshǐ). The three reported to different ministries in the capital, ensuring that no single provincial official could accumulate the kind of power that the late Tang military governors had.

The Ming also developed the governor-general (總督, zǒngdū) and the grand coordinator (巡撫, xúnfǔ) as higher officials supervising one or more provinces. The governor-general see article on the role of the provincial governor.

The Qing: The Provincial System Completed

The Qing inherited the Ming provincial system and added the Banner system on top of it. The Qing had eighteen provinces in China proper, plus the metropolitan region of Beijing, the dependencies of Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, and the partially incorporated territories of Taiwan, Guizhou, and Yunnan.

The Qing provincial map is recognisably the modern Chinese map. The provinces of Zhili (modern Hebei), Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou are essentially the modern provinces of the same names. The Qing also established the Grand Council (軍機處, jūnjī chù) in the 1730s, giving the emperor a direct line to the provinces that bypassed the formal ministries.

The Modern Aftermath

The provincial system of the late Qing survived the fall of the dynasty. The early Republic of China preserved the eighteen provinces of the Qing, and the provincial governors of the Republic inherited much of the apparatus of their imperial predecessors. The provincial warlords of the 1920s and 1930s demonstrated that the old tension between centre and locality had not gone away.

The People’s Republic, after 1949, abolished the provincial government in favour of a more centralised party-state structure, but the provincial map itself is largely continuous with the late imperial map. The modern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Guangdong, and Shandong are recognisably the same regions that the Ming and Qing administered. For the broader context, see our overview of provincial administration and our survey of Chinese government and bureaucracy.