Province-level divisions of China in the context of "Autonomous regions of China"

Provinces (Chinese: 省; pinyin: Shěng) are the most numerous type of province-level divisions in the People's Republic of China (PRC). There are currently 22 provinces administered by the PRC.

The local governments of Chinese provinces consists of a Provincial People's Government headed by a governor that acts as the executive, a Provincial People's Congress with legislative powers, and a parallel provincial branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that elects a party secretary and a provincial standing committee.

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the second-most populous country after India, representing 17% of the world population. China borders fourteen countries by land across an area of 9.6 million square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), making it the third-largest country by area. The country is divided into 33 province-level divisions: 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 municipalities, and 2 semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the capital, while Shanghai is the most populous city by urban area and largest financial center.

China saw the first humans in the region arriving during the Paleolithic era. By the 2nd millennium BCE dynastic states had emerged in the Yellow River basin. The 8th–3rd centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature and philosophy. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor, ushering in two millennia of imperial dynasties. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the Great Wall, Chinese culture flourished and has heavily influenced its neighbors and lands further afield. China began to cede parts of the country in the 19th century, to European powers by a series of unequal treaties. The 1911 Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China was established the following year. The country was unstable and fragmented during the Warlord Era, which ended upon the Northern Expedition conducted by the Kuomintang to reunify the country.

The special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China are one of four types of province-level divisions of the People's Republic of China directly under the control of its Central People's Government (State Council). As a region, they possess the highest degree of autonomy from China's central government. However, despite the relative autonomy that the Central People's Government offers the special administrative regions, the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee remain capable of enforcing laws for the special administrative regions.

The legal basis for the establishment of SARs, unlike the other administrative divisions of China, is provided for by Article 31, rather than Article 30, of the Constitution of China of 1982. Article 31 reads: "The state may establish special administrative regions when necessary. The systems to be instituted in special administrative regions shall be prescribed by law enacted by the National People's Congress in the light of the specific conditions".

East China (Chinese: 华东; pinyin: huá dōng) is a geographical region in the People's Republic of China, mainly consisting of seven province-level administrative divisions, namely the provinces (from north to south) Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, and the direct-administered municipality Shanghai.

The region was defined in 1945 as the jurisdiction area of the Central Committee's East China Bureau (华东局), which was a merger politburo agency of the Shandong Bureau and the Central China Bureau previously established during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the region included all the aforementioned provinces except Jiangxi, which was previously considered part of South Central China before being reassigned in 1961. The East China Bureau was abolished in 1966 due to the Cultural Revolution, but in 1970 the fourth five-year plan redefined the region as the East China Coordinated Region (华东协作区), which supported the logistics of the Jinan and Nanjing Military Regions. This geographical definition was retained after the economic reform of the 1980s.

China proper, also called Inner China or Han China, are terms used primarily in the Western world in reference to the traditional "core" regions of Chinese civilization centered around the Yellow River and Yangtze River valleys. There is no fixed definition for China proper as many administrative, cultural and territorial shifts have occurred throughout history. One definition refers to the original heartland regions of the Chinese civilization, the Central Plain (southern North China Plain around the lower Yellow River valley) as well as the historical Nine Provinces; another to the Eighteen Provinces inside Shanhai Pass designated by the Qing regime. In contrast, Outer China is a term usually includes the peripheral marchland regions such as Gobi Desert,, Tarim Basin, Northeast China, Dzungaria, Tibetan Plateau and Yungui Plateau, which were historically autonomous regions with unstable allegiance to the authority of Chinese monarchs.

The term was first used by the Europeans during the 17th century to distinguish the historical "Han lands" (Chinese: 漢地, i.e. regions long dominated by the majority Han Chinese population) from "frontier" regions of China where Han populations intermix with other indigenous ethnicities (e.g. Turkic peoples such as Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Uzbeks, Mongolic peoples, and Tibeto-Burmese peoples such as Tibetans, Yi and Bai) and newer foreign immigrants (e.g. Slavic colonists such as Russians and Ukrainian Cossacks), sometimes known as "Outer China". There was no direct translation for "China proper" in the Chinese language at the time due to differences in terminology used by the Qing regime to refer to the regions.

North China (Chinese: 华北) is a geographical region of the People's Republic of China, consisting of five provincial-level administrative divisions, namely the direct-administered municipalities Beijing and Tianjin, the provinces Hebei and Shanxi, and the autonomous region Inner Mongolia (although the four prefectures east of the Greater Khingan Range are sometimes regarded as parts of Northeast China).

Part of the larger region of Northern China (Beifang), it lies north of the Qinling–Huaihe Line, with its heartland in the North China Plain. Most inhabitants here speak variants of Northern Chinese languages such as Mandarin, which includes the Beijing dialect and its cousin variants. The Beijing dialect is largely the basis of Standard Chinese (or Standard Mandarin), the official language of the People's Republic of China. Jin Chinese and Mongolian are also widely spoken due to the political and cultural history of the area.