| Country-governed-district refers to the grass-root administrative division below the level of county and governed by county. From the official establishment of administrative division system in Qin dynasty until Qing dynasty, county was the bottom-down level of the government in China, just as the saying goes: the king power does not go down to county-below places. However, there were systemic village organizations in county-below places in history where the king's power never went to yet matters of which could not be neglected. The appointment of those village governors was not within the scope of central government's duty, but still needed care of the above authorities, because they should be deemed as a level of our administrative division due to their grass-root features. The village level basic administrative structure was started in Chun-Chiu and Warring States Period and shaped in Qin and Han period. The Xiang (village) Ting system was changed into Xiang (village) Li system in Sui dynasty and the village was not the basic administration anymore. In Qing period, things were changed again. Qing government issued "the Autonomy Chapters for Cities, Towns and Villages" in January 1909, re-confirming the basic position of cities, towns and villages by law. The "Outline of County-level Organizations" in the republic period stipulated clearly that villages and towns are grass-root administrative divisions below county level. Since the foundation of People's Republic of China, village became the basic administrative division under the governance of county. The constitution in 1954 confirmed the premier-level administrative position of villages and towns at the first time in forms of constitution by specifying that the grass-root administrations in rural area are villages, ethnic villages and towns. That is to say, there were official country-governed-districts in our administrative division system at least from Qin dynasty to earlier Sui dynasty, and from late Qing period to the present.The reformation and opening up of China brings us a new economic and political atmosphere ; the globalization and WTO regulations challenge the functions of all levels of governments among which many are reformative; and the whole country's administrative division system including country-governed-district are confronted with new requirements due to a series of new circumstances including the differentiation of rural and urban places and change of their comparative position. The proposition of promoting socialism new rural construction in the fifth plenary session of the 16th CPC in October, 2005 has shed great importance on the county division development and is due to affect our country's county administrative division system profoundly in our country. First of all, the new rural construction would promote the economic development and the urbanization process of county-governed rural district, and further promote the developing process from village to town and from town to city. Meanwhile, the construction of new socialism rural area requires overall deepening of functional shift and structural reform of villages and towns. It would also play an important role in pushing forward the democratic political construction of rural area, raising peasants' democratic and legal consciousness and cultivating their democratic self-governing awareness. Finally it would benefit the shaping and developing of local democratic self-governance system in our country.Urbanization is one developing theme of our country in the 21st century and is directly related to the smooth progress of our modernization. The urbanization model propelled by small villages and towns has opened a new way of urbanization different from that of developed countries. Since 1990, the rapid pace of urbanization of rural area and the split development of villages and towns has enabled some villages and towns turning into county-governed key center towns. "the eleventh five-year planning outline of PRC's national economic and social development" issued in 2006 again brought forward the concept that "persist in the coordinative development of big, middle, small cities and small towns, enthusiastically and prudently promoting cityship and township". Therefore, we should consider and meet with the demand of modernization and urbanization under the perquisite of ensuring a basic stable county-governance system and considering the overall complete shape of administrative division system and county-governed township system and their relations with each other, borrowing ideas from city-and- town division system experience of major developed countries (America, Japan, Germany, France etc) and Taiwan, and from some case studies. We then should select some large scale, conditioned center towns (new town) with developing prospect to implement county-govern-city system (cities at town level) and city management, and to realize the systemic shift from county to village, from town system to county-village, town, city system in order to provide new theories support to the systemic reform of country-governed-district in our country.However, the spreading city-establishing model at present has been changed from the previous "city establishing by piece-cutting" to "overall transforming system" model (transforming county to city, prefecture to city) featured by city-village overall governance. These have well denoted that there is serious deviation in the practice of China's administrative division system. Various shortcomings and errors have been incurred by a changed establishing model of the settlement system from city-type administrative division into graded district system establishing (regional administrative division) by neglecting the great differences between them. All these disadvantages have caused the chaos of our city-establishing system and incompatibility with international level.China has to seek new ways to reform its city-establishing system and to search for new models. The "eleventh five-year" plan clearly specifies the requirement of "to perfect administrative division establishment and management models". The study on and implementing of trio-level city establishment (directly governed city, province governed city, county governed city) and the city establishment model of "appropriate piece-cutting city establishment" has great influence toward the innovation of our city establishment system.The modernization of China is actually a progress of democracy. China has been a single centralized country from a long time ago, which takes it for granted that the local government shall report to center government politically and be governed and supervised directly by central government. It is impossible for local governments to become a first level political entity entitled with comparative independence as that in a federal country. But since the reform and opening up of China, our central and regional economic relations has been in the coordinative process of authority decentralization together with the founding and completing of socialism market economic system and the deepening of economic system reform. The power expansion of economic control of regional government inevitably demands corresponded political power expansion. Therefore, political relations have to be adjusted and changed accordingly mainly on the side of legislation, governing personnel, administrative conducting and controlling etc. thus we shall consider our country's future local governance problems form the angle of relations among governments (mainly relations between central and regional government). Meanwhile,With the increasing living standard and developing democratic policy, citizens' ability to participate in or comment on politics in our country has been increased greatly, which demands center government to decentralize its authority in order to achieve regional autonomy ultimately. However, the author here thinks that the country-governed-district system could lead the way to that ultimate goal through accumulating and spreading experience. The thesis also proposes specific outline of autonomy regulations of villages, towns and cities and conceives major supporting measures to the reform of the county-governed division system.This thesis aims to take the subject of country-governed-district and to follow the line of its (administrative organizations governed by county) reform and development in history. The thesis also combines and extracts the most advanced the knowledge of geography, history, administration, economy and other relevant theoretical disciplines in order to describe in a panoramic view the major establisliments and management systems of country-governed-district (organizations governed by county) in different ages in our country, to conclude their rules and developing mechanism and to analyze the profound development mechanism of village-and-town administrative division after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Regarding the current administrative division reform centered by country-governed-district, the author gives systemic analysis from different angles and by relating various kinds of disciplines, and would conceive the direction of future country-governed-district reform through theoretical and practice study and learning from experience of city-and-town system of other countries and Taiwan. The whole article is composed of nine chapters whose major content is listed below.Introduction: this part introduces the subject of this thesis that country-governed-district, defines and classifies some relevant concepts, points out the theoretical and practical sense of this study and summarizes the train of thought and methodology of this thesis.Chapter 1, the focus of this chapter lies in generalizing major domestic study achievements and evaluating several major reforming proposes on country-governed-district at present through analyzing its general theories and studying progress in our county and other countries, tracing back some documents and statements of this field of study and considering the status quo and problems of village & town administrative system and its management system.Chapter3, regarding the shaping, developing and changing of the county governing system in our country, it analyzes systemically the overall and basic developing and evolving line of country-governed-district (organizations governed by county) in history from Qin and Han dynasty to the republic period, and further takes a research into the establishment and management s of the administrative division system during the special revolution-base period before the founding of PRC. It also concludes the features and developing and changing rules of country-governed-district through the time and the regional and city-village's divide-and-control system.Chapter4, this part checks in phase the country-governed-district system of the new China, discusses its evolving regulations through the time and puts emphasis on problems of urbanizing trend of country-governed-districts, expanding managing scale and grade decreasing. Meanwhile, it takes a deep research on the status and existing problems of the country-governed-district systems, and analyzes the unsuitability of our current village and town system. And then, it analyzes the necessity of reformation of the country-governed-district system in our country.Chapter5, this part analyzes that concerning the re-fixing of country-governed-district in our country under the conditions of WTO, globalization, urbanization, informationization and new development of rural construction, the thesis also indicates our direction of future reform of country-governed-district (village, town level) system: to build county-governed-city system in order to accomplish the transformation from county-village and town system to county-village, town and city system; to promote regional autonomy in administrative system in order to realize the autonomy of county-governed villages (ethnic villages), towns and cities.Chapter 6, this part analyzes the city system including the organizationalsystem to cities & towns,and the administer powers in the main countries (America, Japan, Germany, France etc) and our Chinese Taiwan area, sum up the experience, and analyzes the exploration and practices of country-governed-city system in late Qing dynasty and early public period, in order to provide experence to the reformation of the country-governed-district system in our country.Chapter 7, in order to analyze the feasibility of county-governed city system in our country, this chapter sets out from the principle of "the shoe must fit the foot", the growing trend toward cityship and township, the overall and main direction of administrative division system reforming in our country, the survey of public recognition. Moerover, it denotes that the implementing of county-governed city system is the combination of city system and the new idea of country-governed-district system in our country, and it shows the basic content of future county-governed city system: establishing future trio-level city system based upon the innovation of city establishing system— directly governed city, province governed city, county governed city; creating "appropriate piece cutting city establishing" model under the management concept of "urban-and-suburban overall governing"; making reasonable standard of county governed city establishment; specifying in auditing and approving regulations future procedures and organizations for the county governed city auditing and approving; confirming several establishing types of our future county governed city; and estimating scientifically at a preliminary stage the possible amount of town-level cities.Chapter 8, it puts forward the autonomy system of county governed villages, towns and cities in our country. Starting from the changing relations between central government of China and its regional governments, this part analyzes features and disciplines of relations among governments in all phases of history and points out that decentralization is the inevitable trend of the development of relations among governments. Meanwhile, this chapter shows that China has hold the tradition of regional autonomy from history by analyzing the regional squires' self-governing characteristics in historic time, and denotes that the administrative system would definitely leads to regional self-governing in our country by relating the regional political modernization process in modern times, while the county-governed-district would step in head to accumulate experience for all-round regional autonomy. Further this chapter would analyze the feasibility of county governed administrative division autonomy and its basic principles, and establish preliminarily new systems of our county governed administrative division management: autonomy system of villages, towns and county governed cities, based on the defining of the nature of village-or-town level cities, scope of autonomy rights, and the founding of supervision mechanics.Chapter 9, this chapter analyzes various limitative elements and obstacles in China's county governed administrative division reform, ie the autonomy innovation of county governed cities and village-or-town level cities, and proposes main supporting measures to the reform.Chapter 10, this part expects getting more penetrating understanding to the institutional reform of county-administrating-district in China throught same cases study.Conclusions, to generalize the key problems and results the thesis has discussed above.
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