From the administrative hierarchy to the system of administrative divisions

The administrative hierarchy in China is the ranked structure of Party and government administration, from the central government to the provinces, prefectures, counties, and towns. With origins in the imperial era, the administrative hierarchy transcends imperial and modern state systems. As a stable structure of levels of government, it is a framing device for analysis of central–local relations, ranks of the bureaucracy, decentralization and recentralization, and local administration. The dynamic structure of state organization - the system of administrative divisions - incorporating both hierarchical line administration and territorial area governance or tiao–kuai relations, extends the administrative hierarchy concept to the subnational territorial system. Where the Western scholarship tends to focus on local Party organization and government administration, the Chinese scholarship also analyzes administrative reform through changes to the administrative divisions. In addition to levels of government, the complex dynamics of administrative division reform include dividing or merging areas and adjusting boundaries, adding and reclassifying types such as special economic zones, adding functions and granting separate rights, reassigning rank subordination or adding half ranks and more. The chapter includes an original analysis of the major Reform Era transformation of prefectures into multiple smaller prefecture-level cities in order to propel land development and industrialization. Analysis of the territorial-administrative system through party-state changes to the administrative divisions reveals the spatially dynamic qualities of socialist general planning in the Chinese state system.