The system of city governing county originated in the early 1950s. 1950 The administrative area of Lü da was changed to Lü da, a municipality directly under the Central Government, and governed Jinxian and Changshan counties (195 1 renamed Changhai County). 19565438, Zhejiang Province placed Hangzhou, a municipality directly under the Central Government, under the jurisdiction of Hangzhou. 1954, after being transformed into a municipality under the jurisdiction of Liaoning Province, it continued to administer Jinxian and Changhai. 1958, Hebei province abolished the "Tianjin Special Zone" and placed Wuqing, Jinghai and other 12 counties under the leadership of Tianjin.

In September, 2007, the ninth meeting of the second the NPC Standing Committee adopted the Decision on Municipalities Governing Counties and Autonomous Counties, which made legal provisions on the system of city governing counties and directly promoted the development of the system of city governing counties. From 65438 to 0960, 52 cities led 243 counties in China, accounting for about one-eighth of the total number of counties in China. The turning point of the system of city governing county was the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune Movement, which lacked an objective economic and cultural foundation and soon cooled down. 196 1 year later, with the beginning of economic adjustment and rectification, a large number of cities and counties restored their original systems, and all the special zones and committees in Hebei Province were restored. By 1966, the number of cities under the jurisdiction of counties in China had dropped to 25, and the number of counties under its jurisdiction was less than one third of that in 1960. At this point, the system of city governing county experienced the first ups and downs. Up to now, non-agricultural population is still dominant in the areas under the jurisdiction of provincial cities, mostly provincial capitals or important industrial cities.

65438-0979, the State Council Finance and Economics Committee sent an expert group to investigate the industrial structure of Sichuan Province. At that time, Liu Mingfu, then director of the Institute of Finance and Trade of China Academy of Social Sciences, clearly put forward the concept of "central city". 1982 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China No.51issued the Notice on Reforming the Regional System and Implementing the Municipal Leading County System. 1983 was first piloted in Jiangsu Province and nationwide. Subsequently, the central government issued the "Notice on Several Issues Concerning the Institutional Reform of Party and Government Organs at the Prefecture Level", demanding "actively trying out the merger at the prefecture level", which was regarded as the important content of 1983 local government reform. At this point, the system of city governing county began to be implemented throughout the country. In the sequence of national administrative divisions, cities were officially divided into prefecture-level cities and county-level cities.