There are 16 administrative divisions in Qiandongnan Prefecture. The surnames of counties and cities are Yang, Wu, Wang, Pan, Long, Zhang, Li, Shi, Liu and Luo respectively.

Kaili City is the seat of the state capital of Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, the political, economic and cultural center of the whole state, the top 100 counties in western China and the economically strong counties in Guizhou Province. Kaili is a new city with Miao as the main body and multi-ethnic communities, and is known as the "Pearl of Miao and Dong". In recent years, it has successively won the titles of "China Excellent Tourist City", "National Sanitary City", "National Water-saving City", "Miao and Dong Medicine Health Hometown", "China Sour Soup Food Capital", "National Green Model City" and "China Green Mountain Ecological Strong County". It was included in the national pilot reform of small and medium-sized cities, the third batch of national new urbanization pilots, and the first batch of transit metropolis construction cities, and was selected as the first batch of innovative counties (cities) in China. Won the national civilized city in 2020.