Provinces of China
Provincial-level administrative divisions () or first-level administrative divisions (), are the highest-level Chinese administrative divisions. There are 34 such divisions, classified as 23 provinces (), four municipalities, five autonomous regions, and two Special Administrative Regions. All but Taiwan Province and a small fraction of Fujian Province (currently administered by the Republic of China) are controlled by the People's Republic of China.
History of the administrative divisions of China before 1912
Chen dynasty also set up a series of new immigrant prefectures along the Yangtze River, such as the Southern Xuzhou and Northern Jiangzhou, etc. The administrative division began to mess up. Northern and Southern dynasties were eventually reunified by Sui dynasty in 589. At that time, there were hundreds of prefectures all over China. Emperor Wen of Sui thus launched a major reform on the administrative division system which changed the Zhou-Jun-Xian (Prefecture, Sub-Prefecture, County) system into Zhou-Xian system, and the traditional nine provinces would be restored.
By the time unity was finally reestablished by the Sui dynasty, the provinces had been divided and redivided so many times by different governments that they were almost the same size as commanderies, rendering the two-tier system superfluous. As such, the Sui merged the two together. In English, this merged level is translated as "prefectures". In Chinese, the name changed between "zhou" and "jun" several times before being finally settled on "zhou". Based on the apocryphal Nine Province system, the Sui restored nine "zhou".