prefecture-level city

Calque of Chinese 地級市／地级市 (dìjíshì, literally “prefecture (地區／地区)-level city”)

prefecture-level city (plural prefecture-level cities)

1. An administrative division of China immediately below the province level, often comprising a central urban area, a large surrounding rural area, and smaller towns and cities. (Most of China proper today is part of a prefecture-level city.)
   • 2001, Zhang, Li, “Commercial Culture, Social Networks, and Migration Passages”, in Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China's Floating Population‎, Stanford: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, LCCN 2001020611, OCLC 237502919, page 48:

     The majority of migrants in Zhejiangcun came from two areas under the jurisdiction of a prefecture-level city, Wenzhou, in Zhejiang province: Yueqing, a county-level city, and Yongjia, a rural county.

   • 2004, Yang, Fengchun (杨凤春), “Local Governments”, in 中国政府 [Chinese Government], Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, →ISBN, OCLC 836912867, pages 260-261:

     (3) Prefecture-level Cities
     A prefecture-level city is a large or medium-sized city, smaller than an MDUCG and sub-provincial city. It generally has an urban, non-agricultural population of over 250,000, which includes over 200,000 in the seat of the city government; a total industrial output value of over 2 billion yuan; developed tertiary industry with an output value exceeding that of primary industry and accounting for over 35 percent of the GDP; over 200 million yuan of budgetary revenue at the local level; and has become a central city among several cities and counties. By the end of 1997, there were 222 prefecture-level cities around China.
     [...]In fact, a prefecture-level city has become a local administrative unit with the characteristics of both ordinary local administrative divisions and local city divisions.

   • 2012, Healing, Romance & Revolution‎, Book Publishers Network, →ISBN, LCCN 2011945644, OCLC 795249645, page 43:

     Presently, Yueyang is a prefecture-level city in the northeast corner of Hunan province on the southern shores of Dongting Lake

   • 2022 March 10, Sangyal Kunchok; Lobe Socktsang, “Security tight in Tibet’s Lhasa on anniversary of uprising”, in Radio Free Asia‎, archived from the original on 11 March 2022:

     The source said that as early as last month, authorities had been hiring unemployed Tibetans in settlements on the outskirts of Lhasa to enter the city to “monitor the situation” for any signs of unrest, particularly in areas around the revered Sera, Drepung, and Ganden monasteries.
     “Chinese authorities started hiring local Tibetans from [area] villages in February. From one of the villages alone, around 30 unemployed Tibetans were hired, and most were sent to Lhasa and Shigatse,” he said, referring to another prefecture-level city in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR).