When referring to political divisions of China, town is the standard English translation of the Chinese 镇 (traditional: 鎮; pinyin: zhèn; Wade–Giles chen4). It is a fourth-level administrative unit, i.e. one of the units into which counties and districts are divided. Another common fourth-level unit is the township (乡; pinyin: xiāng); a township is typically smaller in population and more remote than a town (zhèn). Similarly to a higher-level administrative units, the borders of a town (zhen) would typically include an urban core (what one would call a "town" in Europe or America - a small town with the population on the order of 10,000 people), as well as rural area with some villages (村 cun, or 庄 zhuang).

en.wikipedia.org · CC-BY-SA