page_title: History of the administrative divisions of China before 1912
section_title: Provinces and Feudatory Regions under the Qing dynasty
hierarchical_section_title: History of the administrative divisions of China before 1912 / Provinces and Feudatory Regions under the Qing dynasty
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Qing Dynasty in 1820. (Includes provincial boundaries and the boundaries of modern China for reference.) Provinces in yellow, military governorates and protectorates in light yellow, tributary states in orange. Adapted from File:ROC_PRC_comparison_eng.jpg and information complied from: http://baike.baidu.com/view/5405.htm http://map.huhai.net/58-59.jpg http://www.sina7.com/jdwh/UploadFiles_6109/200709/20070918093610860.jpg File:China_and_Japan,_John_Nicaragua_Dower_(1844).jpg File:Carte_generale_de_l'Empire_Chinois_et_du_Japon_(1836).jpg File:Empire_Chinois,_Japon_(1832).jpg File:L'Empire_Chinois_et_du_Japon_(1833).jpg http://city.udn.com/3011/4192243?tpno=48&amp;cate_no=0 http://bbs.godeyes.cn/showtopic-371673.aspx 中文（简体）‎: 大清嘉庆二十五年疆域图。 中文（繁體）‎: 大清嘉慶廿五年疆域圖。 日本語: 大清の嘉慶25年の疆域の図。 한국어: 대청제국의 가경25년의 지도. Tiếng Việt: Đại Thanh bản đồ (1820). Français&#160;: Carte du Grand Empire des Qing la 25e année Jiaqing du règne de l'empereur Qing Jiaqing (1820). Cette carte inclus les frontières provinciales et les frontières de la chine contemporaine pour référence. Les provinces sont en jaune, les gouvernorats et protectorats militaires en jaune claire, les états tributaires en orange.
context_page_description: The history of the administrative divisions of the Imperial China is quite complex. Across history, what is called 'China' has taken many shapes, and many political organizations. For various reasons, both the borders and names of political divisions have changed—sometimes to follow topography, sometimes to weaken former states by dividing them, and sometimes to realize a philosophical or historical ideal. For recent times, the number of recorded tiny changes is quite large; by contrast, the lack of clear, trustworthy data for ancient times forces historians and geographers to draw approximate borders for respective divisions. But thanks to imperial records and geographic descriptions, political divisions may often be redrawn with some precision. Natural changes, such as changes in a river's course, or loss of data, still make this issue difficult for ancient times.
context_section_description: In 1644, Beijing fell to the Manchus, who established the Qing dynasty, the last dynasty of China. The Qing government applied the following system over China proper:
  Provinces (省, shěng)
  Circuits (道, dào)
  Prefectures (府, fǔ), Independent Departments (直隸州/直隶州, zhílìzhōu), and Independent Subprefectures (直隸廳/厅, zhílìtīng)
  Counties (縣/县, xiàn), Departments (散州, sànzhōu), Subprefectures (散廳/散厅, sàntīng)
  The Qing split Shaanxi into Shaanxi and Gansu, Huguang into Hubei and Hunan, and South Zhili into Jiangsu and Anhui. Hebei was now called Zhili rather than North Zhili. These provinces are now nearly identical to modern ones. Collectively they are called the "Eighteen Provinces", a concept that endured for several centuries as synonymous to China proper.
  This system applied only to China proper, with the rest of the empire under differently systems, official name is "Feudatory Regions"   (藩部, fān bù). Manchuria, Xinjiang, and Outer Mongolia were ruled by military generals assigned by the Lifan Yuan, while Inner Mongolia was organized into leagues. The Qing court put Amdo under their direct control and organized it as Qinghai and also sent imperial commissioners to Tibet (Ü-Tsang and western Kham, approximately the area of the present-day Tibet Autonomous Region) to oversee its affairs.
  In the late 19th century, Xinjiang and Taiwan were both set up as provinces. However, Taiwan was ceded to Imperial Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Near the end of the dynasty, Manchuria was also reorganized into three more provinces (Fengtian, Jilin, Heilongjiang), bringing the total number to twenty-two. In 1906, the first romanization system of Mandarin Chinese, postal romanization, was officially sanctioned by the Imperial Postal Joint-Session Conference, which showed in the following table.
caption: China and its provinces, near its greatest extent. (1820)
exif: {}