This collection of polygon shapefiles contains administrative boundary maps of China at the county, city and province level for the years from 1949-2014. The polygons were created at a scale of 1:100,000. Attribute data include the names in English and Chinese.
The data sources for the layers in the collection "Administrative Boundary Maps of China, 1949-2014" include the following primary sources: “The Historical Changes of Administrative Regions of China, 1949-1983” (three volumes); 《中华人民共和国县级以上行政区沿革》（三册，1949-1983年）“The Atlas of Changes of Administrative Regions of China”;《中华人民共和国行政区划沿革地图集》The yearly publications of “The Administrative Regions”, 1985-2014; 每年的出版行政区划简册（1985-2014年）The web site for administrative regions: www.xzqh.org; 行政区划网www.xzqh.org
This dataset is intended for researchers, students, and others for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as joining with tabular data, viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data.
The following changes were recorded in the administrative divisions at county level and above: 1、Changes in the county name 县名更名 2、Merged counties 县界合并 3、Split counties 县界分割 4、Changes in the administrative structure of counties 县界省级归属变更 5、Changes from county to county level city 县改县级市 6、Changes from county level city to county 县级市改县 7、 Changes from county to district 县改区 8、Changes in the district names 区改名 9、Changes from district to county 区改县 10、Merged districts 区合并 11、Split districts 区拆分 12、Changes from county level city to prefecture city 县级市改地级市 13、Changes in the municipalities under the central government 直辖市变更 The field of “Year” in the attribute table of each map indicates the year of change. The periods of main changes in administrative divisions are as follows: 1. 1949 – 1954: changes in province-level divisions. In 1949, there was a total of 51 province-level divisions, including 12 municipalities administrated directly by the central government. In 1954, there was a total of 36 province-level divisions, including 3 municipalities administrated directly by the central government. 2. 1988: Hainan was established as a province 3. 1997: Chongqing was established as a province-level municipality administrated directly by the central government. Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of People’s Republic of China. 4. 1999: Macau became a Special Administrative Region of People’s Republic of China.