Inside China

China is composed by 22 provinces (省)  that are the highest division of China. Each province has its Communist Party of China provincial Committee with a Representative at its head that controls the province. RPC claims that Taiwan is the Tawain Province with Penghu Island in , Kinmen and Matsu would take part in Fujian province, and Pratas and Itu Aba in guangdong and Hainan province. Those territories are controlled by Republic of China.

5 Autonomous Regions 自治区: Guangxi (1958), Tibet (1965), Inner Mongolia (1947), Ningxia (1958), Xinjiang (1955). They have their own government and they each reprensent a minority.  

4 direct-controlled municipalities 直辖市: Municipality of Beijing with 19,612,368 inhabitants, municipality of Shanghai with 23,019,148 inhabitants, municipality of Chongqing with 28,846,170 inhabitants and municipality of Tianjin with 12,938,224 inhabitants. Controlled by the mayor who seats at the National's People Congress. Municipalities are the highest sub-division of cities in the People's Republic of China, there are also Prefecture-level cities and county-level cities, that are also divided in several sub-division. 

To sum up, being a Prefecture-level city requires 3 criteria: urban centre with an unreal population over 250,000 inhabitants, industrial outputs that are valuable for 200,000,000rmb, output of tertiary sector must represent 35% of the GDP, and be higher than the one for the primary sector. 

County-level city is the lowest level, and in mainland china there are more than 1400 counties. The Governor is called the Secretary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_China#/media/File:China_provinces.png