What are the Provinces of China?

Mainland China has 31 province-level divisions: 22 provinces, five autonomous regions and four municipalities run directly by the central government.

• The autonomous regions are Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang and Ningxia; the municipalities are Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing.
• The province system goes back to the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century.
• Many of today's boundaries were set under the Ming and Qing dynasties.
• The autonomous regions were established between 1947 and 1965.
• Hainan became a province in 1988, and Chongqing a municipality in 1997.
• Hong Kong and Macau are separate special administrative regions.