Sub-provincial division
Based on Wikipedia: Sub-provincial division
Imagine a city that belongs to a province but doesn't really answer to it. A city where the mayor holds the same rank as a vice-governor, where tax revenue flows directly to Beijing, and where even the local football team once had privileges that provincial capitals could only dream of. Welcome to China's peculiar world of sub-provincial cities—an administrative category that technically doesn't exist in Chinese law, yet shapes the governance of fifteen major urban centers and over 100 million people.
The Ghost Category
Here's the strange part: if you search through China's legal codes, you won't find "sub-provincial city" defined anywhere. The concept doesn't appear in official statistical classifications. It has no explicit legislative foundation.
Yet these cities are unmistakably real.
What makes a sub-provincial city isn't a law—it's a personnel decision. The key is who runs the place. When Beijing appoints a deputy provincial-level official (equivalent to a deputy minister in the national government) to lead a city's party committee and municipal government, that city effectively becomes sub-provincial. Everyone beneath those leaders gets bumped up half a grade too. A department head who would be a regular director in an ordinary city becomes a deputy departmental-level official here.
It's governance by appointment rather than by statute—a very Chinese solution that creates meaningful differences without requiring legislative action.
The Fifteen
China currently has fifteen sub-provincial cities. Ten of them are provincial capitals: Harbin and Changchun in the frozen northeast, Shenyang (once the Manchurian capital under Japanese occupation), Jinan in Shandong, Nanjing (the former Nationalist capital), Hangzhou (Marco Polo's favorite city), Guangzhou (the great southern trading hub), Wuhan (where the Yangtze meets the Han River), Chengdu (gateway to Tibet), and Xi'an (terminus of the ancient Silk Road).
The other five are different. They're not provincial capitals at all—they're coastal economic powerhouses: Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, and Shenzhen. These five carry an additional designation that sounds almost oxymoronic: "separately planned cities." They're part of their provinces administratively but economically independent of them, dealing directly with Beijing on fiscal matters.
There's also one autonomous prefecture with sub-provincial status: the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, near the border with Kazakhstan. It's unique because it governs not just its own territory but two other prefectures beneath it—Tacheng and Altay—creating a nested hierarchy that exists nowhere else in China.
What "Separate Planning" Actually Means
The term "separately planned city" comes from China's command economy era, when central planners in Beijing set production targets, allocated resources, and determined consumption quotas for every region. Normally, this planning happened at the provincial level. Provinces received their allocations and distributed them downward.
But some cities were too economically important to be filtered through provincial bureaucracies. Beijing wanted direct control. So these cities received their own "planning accounts"—independent allocations that bypassed provincial governments entirely. The city's budget went straight to Beijing. Its major industries answered to central ministries. Its planners sat at the national table.
Think of it like a corporate subsidiary that reports directly to the global CEO rather than through regional management. The regional manager still technically has authority, but on matters that count, the subsidiary picks up the phone and calls headquarters.
Today, even though China has moved to a market economy, separately planned cities retain this direct relationship with the central government. The Ministry of Commerce maintains a special office in Qingdao. The China Securities Regulatory Commission has a dedicated bureau in Dalian. The National Financial Regulatory Administration runs a Ningbo branch. These aren't just regional outposts—they're acknowledgments that these cities operate at a different level.
The Football Privilege
Perhaps nothing illustrates the real-world effects of this status better than football.
Before 1994, separately planned cities held equal membership status with provinces in the Chinese Football Association. This meant Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, and Shenzhen could each field their own teams in the China Champions League—a right normally reserved for provincial-level entities. A city of a few million people had the same football representation as a province of fifty million.
When Hangzhou and Jinan were elevated to sub-provincial status in 1994, they didn't get this privilege. They'd missed the window. The original separately planned cities kept their football teams; the newcomers didn't. It's a small thing, perhaps, but it reveals how these administrative distinctions create real, tangible differences in what cities can do.
The Three Waves
The separately planned city system emerged in three distinct phases, each responding to different political and economic pressures.
The First Wave (1950s): The newly established People's Republic needed to industrialize rapidly. The Soviet Union had agreed to help build 156 major industrial projects across China—steel mills, power plants, machine factories—and many of these would be concentrated in key cities. Beijing wanted direct oversight of these strategic sites, so it designated five former regional hub cities (Shenyang, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Xi'an) as separately planned. Their economic plans fed directly into national planning documents. This lasted until 1958, when administrative simplification transferred control back to the provinces.
The Second Wave (1960s): The Great Leap Forward had been a disaster. Mao's campaign to rapidly industrialize through mass mobilization had caused economic chaos and contributed to a famine that killed tens of millions. In the early 1960s, the government tried to restore order through centralization. Six major cities regained their separately planned status from 1964 to 1968. This time, the arrangement was more nuanced—provinces remained primary, but eight key areas including industrial production and capital construction were incorporated into national planning. State-owned enterprises in these cities could keep their depreciation funds and received dedicated investment for upgrades. The policy helped these cities recover, though the Cultural Revolution would soon bring new disruptions.
The Third Wave (1983-1989): After Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping's rise, China embarked on economic reform. Cities became laboratories for capitalism with Chinese characteristics. Chongqing became the first officially designated separately planned city in 1983. Wuhan, Shenyang, and Dalian followed in 1984. That year, the government tried to limit expansion to provincial capitals, adding Harbin, Guangzhou, and Xi'an. But pressure from economically dynamic coastal cities proved irresistible. Starting in 1986, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, and Shenzhen gradually secured approval. By 1989, Nanjing, Chengdu, and Changchun rounded out the list at fourteen cities.
The 1994 Transformation
The early 1990s brought another economic revolution: the decision to build a "socialist market economy." State planning would give way to market mechanisms. This created an awkward situation for separately planned cities. Their special status was rooted in the planning system—but if there was less planning, what did "separately planned" even mean?
Beijing's solution was elegant. In 1993, it stripped the separately planned designation from most provincial capitals, keeping it only for Chongqing and the five coastal cities (Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, Shenzhen). Then in 1994, it created a new category: "sub-provincial cities."
All sixteen cities—the fourteen original separately planned cities plus Hangzhou and Jinan—received this status. But now there was a distinction. The provincial capitals were sub-provincial but not separately planned. They had elevated officials but didn't bypass their provinces economically. The five coastal cities (plus Chongqing) were both sub-provincial and separately planned—elevated in status and economically autonomous.
This two-tier arrangement helped resolve tensions between provinces and cities. Provincial governments had complained about losing control of their most important cities. Now they could coordinate better with most sub-provincial cities while accepting that a few coastal powerhouses would continue operating independently.
In 1997, the system changed one last time when Chongqing was elevated to become China's fourth municipality directly under central government control, joining Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin. This was less about Chongqing's economy than about managing the massive Three Gorges Dam project and the millions of people who would be displaced by the reservoir. A directly controlled municipality could handle resettlement better than a city within Sichuan Province.
With Chongqing's departure, only five separately planned cities remained—and they remain the same today: Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen, and Shenzhen.
Shenzhen: The Ultimate Experiment
Among the five, Shenzhen stands out as the most extraordinary. In 1980, it was a fishing village of thirty thousand people across the border from Hong Kong. Deng Xiaoping designated it as China's first Special Economic Zone—a place where capitalism could be tested without contaminating the rest of the country.
Today Shenzhen has over twelve million residents and an economy larger than many European countries. It's home to Tencent, Huawei, BYD, and countless other tech giants. Its transformation from village to metropolis in a single generation may be the most dramatic urban development in human history.
Shenzhen's separately planned status was essential to this growth. It meant the city could reinvest its tax revenues locally rather than sending them to Guangdong Province. It meant faster approvals and more flexibility. It meant a direct line to Beijing when obstacles arose.
The city became what urban planners sometimes call a "window city"—a place where the rest of China could watch market economics in action and learn from the experiment. Its successes (and occasional failures) shaped policies that eventually spread nationwide.
The Case Against
Not everyone thinks sub-provincial cities and separately planned status are good ideas. Critics raise several concerns.
First, there's fairness. In a market economy, cities should compete on equal terms. But separately planned cities have advantages that others don't—more administrative autonomy, direct fiscal relationships with Beijing, higher-ranking officials who can negotiate better deals. A factory might choose to locate in Qingdao rather than Yantai simply because Qingdao has more clout with central ministries. Is that efficient allocation of resources, or is it just privilege perpetuating itself?
Second, there's regional coordination. When a separately planned city's economic interests diverge from its province's priorities, who decides? Shenzhen and Guangzhou sometimes compete rather than cooperate, even though both are in Guangdong Province. Resource allocation gets complicated. Regional planning becomes a negotiation between equals rather than a hierarchical process.
Third, there's the question of centralization. China has spent decades trying to decentralize economic decision-making, pushing authority down to provinces and localities. Separately planned cities represent the opposite impulse—they bypass intermediate levels and connect directly to Beijing. Critics argue this recreates the problems of excessive central control that reform was supposed to solve.
Finally, there's fiscal clarity. Modern tax systems work best when responsibilities are clearly divided between levels of government. But separately planned cities blur these boundaries. Who pays for what? Who gets which revenues? The arrangements vary from city to city, creating complexity that arguably undermines the standardized tax-sharing mechanisms China has tried to build.
The Conferences
One visible manifestation of sub-provincial city solidarity is the National Joint Conference of Sub-Provincial City People's Congress Standing Committee Chairpersons. This annual gathering brings together the leaders of all sub-provincial city legislatures to share experiences and coordinate positions.
Guangzhou proposed the idea in 1985 and hosted the first conference that February. The cities have rotated hosting duties ever since: Harbin in 1985, Wuhan in 1986, Dalian in 1987, and so on through Changchun in 2011. The conference cycle roughly mirrors the cities' economic and political importance—Guangzhou has hosted twice, and the major coastal cities all take their turns.
These gatherings serve multiple purposes. They let city leaders compare notes on managing urban growth, environmental challenges, and social services. They provide a forum for developing common positions on issues affecting all sub-provincial cities. And they reinforce the sense that these fifteen cities form a distinct category within China's administrative hierarchy—even if that category has no formal legal definition.
Size Matters
Chengdu is currently the largest sub-provincial city, with a population exceeding that of Tianjin—one of China's four directly controlled municipalities. Both Harbin and Chengdu also have more land area than Tianjin. This creates an interesting situation: some sub-provincial cities are bigger and more economically important than entities that theoretically outrank them.
The Pudong New Area of Shanghai and Binhai New Area of Tianjin, though technically county-level districts, have leaders who hold sub-provincial ranks. This reflects the enormous economic significance of these zones—Pudong alone generates more GDP than many provinces—without requiring full administrative reorganization.
A System That Works Despite Itself
The sub-provincial city system is messy, legally ambiguous, and arguably unfair. It creates a hierarchy based on personnel appointments rather than statute. It privileges some cities over others through mechanisms that have more to do with historical accident than rational planning.
And yet it works.
China's fifteen sub-provincial cities are engines of economic growth, magnets for talent, and laboratories for policy innovation. Shenzhen's explosive development, Hangzhou's emergence as an e-commerce hub, Dalian's software industry, Qingdao's manufacturing base—these successes happened in part because sub-provincial status gave these cities room to maneuver.
The system represents a characteristically Chinese approach to governance: pragmatic rather than principled, flexible rather than fixed, defined by practice rather than law. It allows Beijing to treat different cities differently without having to justify those differences through formal legislation that might invite legal challenges or set unwanted precedents.
Whether this approach will survive as China's governance becomes more rules-based remains to be seen. Critics who call for abolishing the system may eventually prevail. But for now, the fifteen sub-provincial cities—and especially the five separately planned ones—occupy a unique space in China's administrative architecture. They're not quite provincial, not quite ordinary, and not quite explicable by any single theory of governance. They're simply what they are: cities that matter too much to be treated like everywhere else.