From time to time I need a quick reference for the twenty-two municipalities and counties of Taiwan. At the bottom of this post you can download a spreadsheet with all of the data I have collected on each of the regions. In everyday use these are the top-level divisions within the country (the old “province” concept is effectively dead). The places in this data are divided into three categories for administrative purposes:

Special municipality

The biggest and richest of Taiwan’s administrative areas, the direct-controlled municipalities have large populations, strong economies, and big budgets. Taipei was the first city to be awarded this status, in 1967, followed by Kaohsiung in 1979. There are now six special municipalities:

• Kaohsiung
• New Taipei
• Taichung
• Tainan
• Taipei
• Taoyuan

Provincial city

The provincial cities are equivalent to counties in terms of political and economic significance. As more cities have become direct-controlled municipalities the number of provincial cities has dwindled to the current three. The name “provincial” is a colonial hangover from when provinces were a thing in ye olde Republicke of China (kids, ask your grandparents).

• Keelung
• Hsinchu City
• Chiayi City

County

The thirteen remaining counties tend to be more less densely populated and less significant both politically and economically. They include the three island counties: Kinmen, Penghu, and tiny Lienchiang (Matsu).

• Changhua
• Chiayi County
• Hualien
• Hsinchu County
• Kinmen
• Lienchiang
• Miaoli
• Nantou
• Penghu
• Pingtung
• Taitung
• Yilan
• Yunlin

What’s in the file?

For each of the twenty-two regions I’ve listed the following information:

• ISO 3166-2:TW code
• Official name
• English
• Hanzi (traditional Chinese characters)
• Mandarin (Hanyu Pinyin)
• Taiwanese (POJ romanization)
• Hakka (POJ romanization)
• Classification (special municipality, provincial city, county)
• Administrative capital
• Subdivisions
• Townships (for counties), county-controlled cities (for counties) and districts (for special municipalities and provincial cities)
• Villages (the subdivision below townships, county-controlled cities, and districts)
• Neighborhoods (the smallest subdivision in everyday use)
• Legislative Yuan constituencies (there are 73 geographical constituencies in total)
• Area (in km²)
• Households (government-registered)
• Population (as of March 2016)
• Population density (in people per km²)
• Chief executive
• “English” name
• Hanzi (traditional Chinese characters)
• Political party

I’ll update the table from time to time. The most recent update was 3 May 2016.

Taiwanese cities and counties 2016-05