Strictly speaking, China's legal system neither recognizes the concept of "sub-provincial administrative divisions" (Chinese: 副省级行政区; pinyin: Fùshěngjí xíngzhèngqū) or "sub-provincial cities" (Chinese: 副省级城市; pinyin: Fùshěngjí chéngshì) nor provides specific legislation for such designations, and these categories are absent from official statistical classifications. The so-called sub-provincial divisions or sub-provincial cities refer to special administrative status granted to selected prefecture-level cities during specific historical periods. This status is operationally defined by appointing deputy provincial-level (deputy ministerial-level) officials as the top leaders of municipal party and government organs. Correspondingly, institutional heads under these jurisdictions hold ranks half a grade higher than their counterparts in regular prefecture-level administrative divisions – specifically, party and government department leaders are designated as deputy departmental-level officials.
China has 15 sub-provincial cities, including Dalian, Qingdao, Ningbo, Xiamen and Shenzhen and 5 separately planned cities (Chinese: 计划单列市). Additionally, the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang holds sub-provincial status as an autonomous prefecture, governing three administrative prefectures: the directly-administered counties and cities under Ili Prefecture, this refers specifically to the core jurisdictional area of Ili Profecture in its narrow administrative sense and also the administrative division-based statistical scope of the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, and Tacheng (Tarbagatay) Prefecture and Altay Prefecture.
