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

wards Ward may refer to: Division or unit * Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward * Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a priso ...

and townships, 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 ...

districts A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...

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 one ...

, 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 (251),

Hà Tĩnh Hà Tĩnh () is a city in Vietnam.Atlas of the World', Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 236. It is the capital of Hà Tĩnh Province, and lies in the North Central Coast region. It is located on National Highway 1A. The Vietnamese capital Hanoi ...

(238),

Hải Dương Hải Dương () is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of Hải Dương, an industrialized province in the Hanoi Capital Region and the Red River Delta in Northern Vietnam. The city is at the midpoint between the capital Hanoi and major port H ...

(234), Quảng Nam (210), Bắc Giang (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 region, three in the Đông Bắc (Northeast) region, three in the Bắc Trung Bộ (North Central Coast) region, and one in the Nam Trung Bộ (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 Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...

ese President Ngo Dinh Diem launched a

counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionar ...

project known as

Strategic Hamlet Program The Strategic Hamlet Program (SHP; vi, Ấp Chiến lược, link=no ) was a plan by the government of South Vietnam in conjunction with the US government and ARPA during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency by pacifying the count ...

, in order to isolate the rural Vietnamese from contact with and influence by the

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

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