The first administrative divisions entitled "city" were established in the 1920s when Taiwan was
under Japanese rule. At this time cities were under the jurisdiction of
prefectures. After the
World War II, nine (9) out of eleven (11)
prefectural cities established by the Japanese government were reform into provincial cities. Their roman spellings are also changed to reflect the official language shift from
Japanese to
Mandarin Chinese, but characters remain the same. The reform was based on the
Laws on the City Formation () of the
Republic of China. This law was passed in the early 20th century. The criteria for being a provincial city included being the provincial capital as well as having a population of over 200,000, or over 100,000 if the city had particular significance in politics, economics, and culture. The division reform in 1945 had some compromises between the Japanese and the Chinese systems, some of the cities with population under the criteria were still be established as provincial cities. After the
government of the Republic of China relocated to
Taipei,
Taiwan in 1949, the population criterion for provincial cities was raised to 500,000 in the
Guidelines on the Implementation of Local Autonomy in the Counties and Cities of Taiwan Province (), which was passed in 1981. It was later raised again to 600,000. Since the streamline of provinces in 1998, provincial cities are all directly under the
central government, and are simply referred to as
cities. The
People's Republic of China (PRC), which claims Taiwan as its
23rd province, has all of its provincial cities classified as
county-level city. == Current cities ==