The following is a word for word transcription of an article of the same name, originally published on the Internet at anthro.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/hbgovernment-u.html.
It has been lightly edited solely by myself, and is used with permission and is the copyright of the author.
The following table shows terms used for various Chinese governmental units at different periods in history. You will notice that sometimes in the same period the same term is used at more than one level of the organizational chart, often producing a slightly different English translation.
The English terms are more or less conventional translations. Simplified characters are in parentheses when they differ from the traditional characters.
Indentation shows administrative subordination.
Both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China use these units, with some variation from place to place. For a time there were also "People's Communes" to be found in rural areas of the mainland.
Taishan Genealogy
Copyright: ©2005 David K Jordan, San Diego & Jon Kehrer, Canberra