County (Taiwan)


A county, constitutionally known as a hsien, is an administrative division unit in Taiwan. Under the administrative structure of Taiwan, it is with the same level of a provincial city. Historically the counties were under the jurisdiction of provinces, but after the streamlining of provinces in 1998, they are all directly led by the central government.

History

The first administrative divisions named "county" was first established in 1661 by the Kingdom of Tungning. The later ruler Qing empire inherited this type of administrative divisions. With the increase of Han Chinese population in Taiwan, the number of counties also grew by time. By the end of Qing era, there were 11 counties in Taiwan. Protestant missionaries in China first romanized the term as hien.
Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. The hierarchy of divisions also incorporated into the Japanese system in the period when Taiwan under Japanese rule. By the end of World War II in 1945, Taiwan was divided into eight prefectures. The prefectures were reformed into eight counties with the same name under Taiwan Province of the Republic of China. Their roman spellings were also changed to reflect the official language shift from Japanese to Mandarin Chinese, but characters remained the same. Note that most of the Japanese prefectural cities were reformed to provincial cities and are not a part of counties.
In late 1949, the government of the Republic of China lost the Chinese Civil War and was relocated to Taipei, Taiwan. In 1950, the counties in Taiwan were reorganized. Counties in populous western Taiwan were split into two to three counties. This pushed the number of counties up to 16. After the war, the government only controlled a few offshore islands of mainland China. These territories were reorganized into two counties: Kinmen and Lienchiang under Fukien. The number of counties under jurisdiction, 16 in Taiwan and 2 in Fukien, remained stable in the period of Martial law in Taiwan until the early 1990s.
NameChineseNameChineseNameChinese
Changhua彰化縣Lienchiang連江縣Tainan臺南縣
Chiayi嘉義縣Miaoli苗栗縣Taipei臺北縣
Hsinchu新竹縣Nantou南投縣Taitung臺東縣
Hualien花蓮縣Penghu澎湖縣Taoyuan桃園縣
Kaohsiung高雄縣Pingtung屏東縣Yilan宜蘭縣
Kinmen金門縣Taichung臺中縣Yunlin雲林縣

Following the democratic reforms in the early 1990s, more proposals of administrative division reforms were widely discussed and ultimately caused some populous counties be reformed to special municipalities in the 2010 and 2014. These counties are:
Currently, the counties are established according to the Local Government Act under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior. This act also endorses some special articles that grants counties with a population of over two million can grant some extra privileges in local autonomy that was designed for special municipalities. This type of counties are often called quasi-municipalities. This term applied to New Taipei and Taoyuan before they became special municipalities.

Current counties

There are currently 13 counties:
Under Article 9 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China, regulated by the Local Government Act, each county has a government headed by an elected county magistrate and an elected county council exercising legislative functions.
The governing bodies of the counties are:

Words in native languages