Counties of Taiwan

Update 2 to "Geopolitical Entities and Codes" was published on 2010-11-30. For Taiwan, it revokes the province codes and replaces them by a set of county and municipality codes, shown below. Update 4, issued on 2011-04-30, revokes three of the codes that were issued in Update 2: TW11 for Kaohsiung county, TW20 for Taichung county, and TW22 for Tainan county. It also changes the name and status of Taipei county to New Taipei municipality.

ISO 3166-2 originally (and inadvertently) assigned some duplicate codes. Chiayi county and municipality were both CYI, Hsinchu was HSZ, Kaohsiung was KHH, Taichung was TXG, Tainan was TNN, and Taipei was TPE. Newsletter number I-4, dated 2002-12-10, changes the codes for those six counties, to eliminate the duplicate codes. The new codes are shown in the table below. Even with the revisions, some of the ISO province codes are duplicates of some of the ISO county codes.

CountyTypHASCISOFIPSPop-2000Pop-1990Area(km.²)CapitalPostcode
ChanghwacTW.TW.CGCHATW051,255,3321,205,0911,074Changhwa500-530
ChiayicTW.TW.CHCYQTW07552,749534,7611,902Chiayi602-625
Chiayi CitymTW.TW.CSCYITW06266,126252,37160Chiayi600
HsinchucTW.TW.HHHSQTW09451,316370,9701,428Hsinchu302-315
Hsinchu CitymTW.TW.HSHSZTW08395,746342,015104Hsinchu300
HualiencTW.TW.HLHUATW10327,064336,8904,629Hualien970-983
IlancTW.TW.ILILATW26444,950436,6002,144Ilan260-272
KaohsiungcTW.TW.KHKHQ1,262,9691,132,1952,793Fengshan814-852
Kaohsiung CitysTW.KH.KCKHHTW021,493,8061,380,663154Kaohsiung800-813
Keelung CitymTW.TW.CLCHITW12387,504348,586133Keelung200-206
KinmencTW.FK.KMTW1356,27581,479153890-896
LienkiangcTW.FK.LKTW1417,77525,97529209-212
MiaolicTW.TW.MLMIATW15534,366526,1811,820Miaoli350-369
NantoucTW.TW.NTNANTW16487,398515,1674,106Nantou540-558
PenghucTW.TW.PHPENTW1783,214105,848127Makung880-885
PingtungcTW.TW.PTPIFTW18872,902875,3302,776Pingtung900-947
TaichungcTW.TW.THTXQ1,510,4801,285,0292,051Fengyuan411-439
Taichung CitymTW.TW.TGTXGTW19989,047772,828163Taichung400-408
TainancTW.TW.TATNQ1,120,3941,022,2032,016Hsinying710-745
Tainan CitymTW.TW.TNTNNTW21725,985672,907176Tainan700-709
TaipeicTW.TW.TPTPQTW233,722,0823,065,7792,053Panchiao207-208, 220-253
Taipei CitysTW.TP.TCTPETW032,624,2572,760,475272Taipei100-116
TaitungcTW.TW.TTTTTTW24204,919249,0883,515Taitung950-966
TaoyuancTW.TW.TYTAOTW251,808,8331,377,9341,221Taoyuan320-338
YunlincTW.TW.YLYUNTW27705,440717,2631,291Touliu630-655
25 divisions22,300,92920,393,62836,178
  • Typ: c=county, m=municipality, s=special municipality
  • HASC: Hierarchical administrative subdivision codes. Middle two letters indicate the province.
    For key, see Taiwan Provinces page.
  • ISO: Codes from ISO 3166-2. For full identification in a global context, prefix "TW-" to the code
    (ex: TW-TXQ represents Taichung county).
  • FIPS: Codes from FIPS PUB 10-4.
  • Pop-2000: 2000-12-16 census
  • Pop-1990: 1990-12-16 census
  • Postcode: Taiwan uses five-digit postal codes in nnn-nn format. The first three digits
    indicate the county.

Change history:

  1. The Encyclopædia Britannica World Atlas, 1957 edition shows Taiwan subdivided into sixteen counties and five municipalities. It does not include any territory in Fukien province, where Taiwan holds a number of offshore islands. In the list below, I have changed some county names to a more modern spelling, and corrected some evident errors in the data.
  2. The Atlas claims to include data from the 1951 and 1953 censuses, but according to the U.S. Census Bureau's  compilation, the first modern census of Taiwan was taken in 1956.
CountyTypePopulationArea(km.²)Area(mi.²)
Changhwacn704,4711,062410
Chiayicn542,0421,951753
Hsinchucn349,8791,481572
Hualiencn178,9324,6291,787
Ilancn262,4412,137825
Kaohsiungcn464,3172,8331,094
Kaohsiung Citymu282,36011344
Keelung Citymu151,92713251
Miaolicn349,3391,820703
Nantoucn308,2054,1061,586
Penghucn81,37812749
Pingtungcn487,5462,7761,072
Taichungcn480,3812,051792
Taichung Citymu202,96916363
Tainancn626,0592,004774
Tainan Citymu226,36317568
Taipeicn592,1182,258872
Taipei Citymu540,9716726
Taitungcn121,4153,5151,357
Taoyuancn346,4661,267489
Yunlincn531,1691,291498
Totals7,830,74835,95813,885
  • Type: cn = county, mu = municipality
  • Population: 1951
  1. ~1952: Yangmingshan municipality split from Taipei county. This change was apparently reversed not long afterward.
  2. 1967: Taipei municipality split from Taiwan province to become Taipei special municipality.
  3. 1979: Kaohsiung municipality split from Taiwan province to become Kaohsiung special municipality.
  4. ~1989: Capital of Taiwan province moved from Taichung to Chung-hsing-hsin-tsun.
  5. Chiayi City and Hsinchu City must have been split from their respective counties between ~1953 and ~1970.

Other names of subdivisions:

  1. Changhwa: Changhua (variant)
  2. Chiayi: Chiai (variant)
  3. Hualien: Hwalien (variant)
  4. Ilan: Yilan (variant)
  5. Keelung: Chilung, Keelong (variant)
  6. Kinmen: Chinmen, Kingmen, Quemoy (variant)
  7. Lienkiang: Lienchiang, Lienkian, Matsu (variant)
  8. Taipei [county]: New Taipei
  9. Yunlin: Yüanlin (variant)

Sources:

  1. [1] 2000 Population and Housing Census (retrieved from http://www.dgbas.gov.tw/census~n/six/lue5/census_p&h&E.htm on 2004-10-14).
  2. [2] 2001 Preliminary Report (Statistics Table) (retrieved from http://www.dgbasey.gov.tw/census~n/two/eh/e61/13/A1.htm on 2004-10-14).
  3. [3] Spreadsheet (retrieved from http://www.dgbas.gov.tw/dgbas03/bs2/92chy/table/A101.xls on 2004-10-14)
  4. [4] Taiwan Magazine One (retrieved from http://www.twmone.com/business/statistique/recensement.php3 on 2004-10-14)
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