A commune (xã) is a type of third tier subdivision of Vietnam. It is divided into 11,162 units along with wards and

townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

, which have an equal status. Communes have a lower status than provincial cities,

towns A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

or districts.

Facts

Certain small villages are not officially regarded as administrative communes. As of December 31, 2008, Vietnam had 9,111 communes. Thanh Hoá Province contained the highest number of communes (586) amongst all province-level administrative units, followed by Nghệ An Province with 436 and

Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...

with 408.

Đà Nẵng Nang or DanangSee also Danang Dragons ( ; vi, Đà Nẵng, ) is a class-1 municipality and the fifth-largest city in Vietnam by municipal population. It lies on the coast of the East Sea of Vietnam at the mouth of the Hàn River, and is on ...

, with only 11 communes, contained the fewest. Counted together, the ten province-level administrative units containing the most communes—namely, Thanh Hoá (586), Nghệ An (436), Hanoi (408),

Thái Bình Thái Bình City () is a city in the Red River Delta of northern Vietnam. It is the capital of Thái Bình Province. The city is located 110 km from Hanoi. The city area is 67.7 square km, with a population of 210,000 people (2006). History ...

(267),

Phú Thọ Phú Thọ () is a district-level town in Phú Thọ Province, Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland ...

(251), Hà Tĩnh (238), Hải Dương (234), Quảng Nam (210),

Bắc Giang Bắc Giang () is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of Bắc Giang Province. Its name, deriving from that of the Province Sino-Vietnamese, means "north of the river." The location is very convenient for transportation: it is 50 km north ...

(207), and

Lạng Sơn Lạng Sơn () is a city in far northern Vietnam, which is the capital of Lạng Sơn Province. It is accessible by road and rail from Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, and it is the northernmost point on National Route 1. History Due to its ge ...

(207)—contain one-third of all the communes in Vietnam. Three of these are located in the

Red River Delta The Red River Delta or Hong River Delta ( vi, Châu thổ sông Hồng) is the flat low-lying plain formed by the Red River and its distributaries merging with the Thái Bình River in northern Vietnam. ''Hồng'' (紅) is a Sino-Vietnamese word ...

region, three in the

Đông Bắc Đông Bắc (literally "Northeast" from ) is the region to the north of the Red River Delta in Vietnam, bordering China. It is called ''Northeast'' to distinguish it from the Tây Bắc () or "Northwest", but it is actually in the north and nort ...

(Northeast) region, three in the Bắc Trung Bộ (North Central Coast) region, and one in the

Nam Trung Bộ South Central Coast ( vi, Duyên hải Nam Trung Bộ, links=no) or (South Central Region) is one of the regions of Vietnam. It consists of the independent municipality of Đà Nẵng and seven other provinces. The two southern provinces Ninh ...

(South Central Coast) region. According to data extracted from General Statistics Office of Vietnam, there are 11,164 third-level (commune-level) administrative subdivisions. As of 2018 February, the number of third-level administrative subdivisions in Vietnam is 11,162. The Administrative divisions of Vietnam

History

In 1957, South Vietnamese President

Ngo Dinh Diem Ngô Đình Diệm ( or ; ; 3 January 1901 – 2 November 1963) was a South Vietnamese politician. He was the final prime minister of the State of Vietnam (1954–1955), and then served as the first president of South Vietnam (Republic o ...

launched a counter-insurgency project known as Strategic Hamlet Program, in order to isolate the rural Vietnamese from contact with and influence by the communist National Liberation Front (NLF). A number of "fortified villages", called "joint families" ( vi, liên gia), were created throughout South Vietnam, consisting of villages that had been consolidated and reshaped to create a defensible perimeter. The peasants themselves would be given weapons and trained in self-defense. Several problems—including corruption, unnecessary amounts of forced relocation, and poor execution—caused the program to backfire drastically, and ultimately led to a decrease in support for Diem's regime and an increase in sympathy for Communist efforts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Commune (Vietnam) Subdivisions of Vietnam Vietnam 3 Communes, Vietnam