Shen Prefecture

Shenzhou or Shen Prefecture (深州) was a zhou (prefecture) in imperial China centering in modern Shenzhou, Hebei, China. It existed (intermittently) from 596 to 1913.

The modern city Shenzhou, established in 1994, retains its name.

References

Prefecture

A prefecture (from the Latin Praefectura) is an administrative jurisdiction or subdivision in any of various countries and within some international church structures, and in antiquity a Roman district governed by an appointed prefect.

Literal prefectures

Antiquity

Prefecture most commonly refers to a self-governing body or area since the tetrarchy when Emperor Diocletian divided the Roman Empire into four districts (each divided into dioceses, grouped under a Vicarius (a number of Roman provinces, listed under that article), although he maintained two pretorian prefectures as an administrative level above the also surviving dioceses (a few of which were split).

Ecclesiastic

As canon law is strongly inspired by Roman law, it is not surprising that the Catholic Church has several offices under a prefect. That term occurs also in otherwise styled offices, such as the head of a congregation or department of the Roman Curia. Various ecclesiastical areas, too small for a diocese, are termed prefects.

Prefectures of Japan

The Prefectures of Japan (都道府県, Todōfuken) consist of 47 prefectures. They form the first level of jurisdiction and administrative division of Japan. They consist of 43 prefectures (県, ken) proper, two urban prefectures (府, fu, Osaka, and Kyoto), one "circuit" or "territory" (道, dō, Hokkaido) and one "metropolis" (都, to, Tokyo). The Meiji Fuhanken sanchisei administration created the first prefectures to replace the provinces of Japan in 1868.

Each prefecture's chief executive is a directly-elected governor (知事, chiji). Ordinances and budgets are enacted by a unicameral assembly (議会, gikai) whose members are elected for four-year terms.

Under the current Local Autonomy Law, each prefecture is subdivided into cities (市, shi) and districts (郡, gun) and each district into towns (町, chō/machi) and villages (村, son/mura). For example, Hokkaido has 14 subprefectures that act as branch offices (支庁, shichō) of the prefecture. Some other prefectures also have branch offices that carry out prefectural administrative functions outside the capital. Tokyo, the capital of Japan, is a merged city-prefecture; a metropolis, it has features of both cities and prefectures.

Prefectures of the People's Republic of China

Prefectures, formally prefecture-level divisions as a term in the context of China, are used to refer to several unrelated political divisions in both ancient and modern China. There are 333 prefecture-level divisions in China. They include 17 prefectures and 283 prefecture-level cities. Other than provincial level divisions, prefectural level divisions are not mentioned in the Chinese constitution. The prefectural government (Chinese: 行政公署; pinyin: xíngzhèng gōngshǔ) is an administrative branch office with the rank of a national ministerial department (Chinese: 司级) and dispatched by the higher-level provincial government. The leader of the prefecture government, titled as prefectural commissioner (Chinese: 行政公署专员; pinyin: xíngzhèng gōngshǔ zhūanyūan), is appointed by the provincial government. Instead of local People's Congresses, the prefecture's working commission of the standing committee of the provincial People’s Congress is dispatched and supervises the prefecture governments, but can not elect or dismiss prefecture governments. The prefecture's working committee of the provincial committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is a part of the prefecture's committee of the CPPCC. This means that the prefecture's working committee of CPPCC is a branch of the provincial committee of CPPCC, not an individual society entity. The same is valid for provincial CPPCC, which are formally sections of the national CPPCC.