China proper,
Inner China or the
Eighteen Provinces was a term used by Western writers on the
Qing dynasty to express a distinction between the core and frontier regions of
China. There is no fixed extent for China proper, as many administrative, cultural, and linguistic shifts have occurred in Chinese history. One definition refers to the original area of Chinese civilization, the
North China Plain; another to the "Eighteen Provinces" system of the
Qing dynasty. There is no direct translation for "China proper" in the
Chinese language due to differences in terminology used by the Qing to refer to the regions and the expression is controversial among scholars, particularly in China, partly because it implies the frontier regions outside China proper are in some way separate or even illegitimate territories of China.