county-level city

A county-level city is one rung of China's administrative hierarchy, sitting where a county sits and under a prefecture-level city or a prefecture.

The word city here states rank, not size or built form. A county-level city governs a whole area including its countryside, so most of its land is rural and its population count covers farmland as well as the urban core.

It is distinct from a prefecture-level city, which is one rank higher and usually contains counties and county-level cities of its own.