Province

A province is almost always an administrative division, within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman provincia, which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outside Italy. The term is now used in many countries.

In many countries with no actual provinces, "the provinces" or "the province" means outside the capital city.

Etymology

The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province", which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia", which referred to the sphere of authority of a magistrate; in particular, to a foreign territory.

A popular etymology is from Latin"pro-" ("on behalf of") and "vincere" ("to triumph" or "to take control of"). Thus a "province" would a territory or function that a Roman magistrate held control of on behalf of his government. In fact, the word Province is an ancient term from public law, which means: "office belonging to a magistrate". This agrees with the Latin term's earlier usage as a generic term for a jurisdiction under Roman law.

Provinces of Italy

In Italy, a province (provincia) is an administrative division of intermediate level between a municipality (comune) and a region (regione).

On 3 April 2014 the Italian Chamber of Deputies gave its final approval to the Law n.56/2014 which involves the transformation of the Italian provinces into "institutional bodies of second level" and the birth of 10 special Metropolitan cities. The reorganization of the Italian provinces became operative by January 2015.

The new law which transforms the provinces is preliminary to their abolition, as a revision of the second part of the Italian Constitution is needed in order to change the current bicameral parliamentary system and to abolish.

Overview

A province of the Italian Republic is composed of many municipalities (comune). Usually several provinces together form a region; the region of Aosta Valley is the sole exception – it is not subdivided into provinces, and provincial functions are exercised by the region.

The three main functions devolved to provinces are:

Provinces of China

Provinces (Chinese: 省; pinyin: Shěng), formally provincial-level administrative divisions (Chinese: 省级行政区; pinyin: Shěng Jí Xíngzhèngqū) or first-level administrative divisions (Chinese: 一级行政区; pinyin: Yī Jí Xíngzhèngqū), are the highest-level Chinese administrative divisions. There are 34 such divisions, classified as 23 provinces (including Taiwan Province, which is claimed but not actually controlled by the People's Republic of China), four municipalities, five autonomous regions, and two Special Administrative Regions.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) claims sovereignty over the territory administered by the Republic of China (ROC), claiming most of it as its Taiwan Province. The ROC also administers some offshore islands which form Fujian Province, ROC. These were part of an originally unified Fujian province, which since the stalemate of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 has been divided between the PRC and ROC.

Note that every province (except Hong Kong and Macau, the two special administrative regions) has a Communist Party of China provincial committee (Chinese: 省委), headed by a secretary (Chinese: 书记). The committee secretary is in effective charge of the province, rather than the nominal governor of the provincial government.