County-level city

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County-level city 县级市 Xiànjíshì
Also known as: County-level municipality
Category	Third level administrative division of a unitary state
Location	People's Republic of China
Found in	Prefectures, Provinces
Number	411 (408 controlled, 3 claimed) (as of 3 April 2023)
Populations	15,124 (Tsona) – 2,054,703 (Puning)
Areas	89 km2 (34 sq mi) (Linxia) – 119,165 km2 (46,010 sq mi) (Golmud)
Government	Various, Central Government
Subdivisions	Town, Township

A county-level municipality (Chinese: 县级市), county-level city or county city, formerly known as prefecture-controlled city (1949–1970: 专辖市; 1970–1983: Chinese: 地辖市), is a county-level administrative division of the People's Republic of China. County-level cities have judicial but no legislative rights over their own local law and are usually governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions.

A county-level city is a "city" (市; shì) and "county" (县; xiàn) that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. As such, it is simultaneously a city, which is a municipal entity, and a county, which is an administrative division of a prefecture. Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing denser populated counties.

County-level cities are not "cities" in the strictest sense of the word, since they usually contain rural areas many times the size of their urban, built-up area. This is because the counties that county-level cities have replaced are themselves large administrative units containing towns, villages and farmland. To distinguish a "county-level city" from its actual urban area (the traditional meaning of the word "city"), the term "市区" (shìqū) or "urban area", is used.