A commune () 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 form of human settlement or administrative subdivision. Its exact definition varies among countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, this tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Canad ...

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

towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

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 ...

. This subdivision has existed since 1428, when Emperor

Lê Thái Tổ Le is a romanization of several rare East Asian surnames and a common Vietnamese surname. It is a fairly common surname in the United States, ranked 975th during the 1990 census and 368th during the 2000 census. In 2000, it was the eighth-most-co ...

re-organised the country into five administrative levels. Xã 社 was the lowest level, equivalent to a village. Since 2019, Vietnam has undertaken a comprehensive rearrangement of administrative units in order to streamline the apparatus of local authorities. The re-organisation, conducted in two periods, between 2020 and 2023 and between 2023 and 2030, comprises forced mergers of several districts and commune-level administrative units and localities. As of April 2023, the number of third-level subdivision units dropped to 10,598 units including 1,737 wards, 614 commune-level towns and 8,247 communes. This has been a significant reduction from 11,162 in 2018.

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 ( ; ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Vietnam, second-most populous city of Vietnam. The name "Hanoi" translates to "inside the river" (Hanoi is bordered by the Red River (Asia), Red and Black River (Asia), Black Riv ...

with 408.

Đà Nẵng Da Nang or DanangSee also Danang Dragons (, ) is the list of cities in Vietnam, fifth-largest city in Vietnam by municipal population. It lies on the coast of the Western Pacific Ocean of Vietnam at the mouth of the Hàn River (Vietnam), Hàn R ...

, 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). Histor ...

(267),

Phú Thọ Phú Thọ () is a district-level town in Phú Thọ Province, Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population o ...

(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 Han ...

(238),

Hải Dương Hải Dương () is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of Hải Dương Province, 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 capita ...

(234), Quảng Nam (210),

Bắc Giang Bắc Giang () is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of Bắc Ninh 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, and 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 geograph ...

(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 () 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 for "red" or "crimson". T ...

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 In Vietnam, South Central Coast () and South Central Region () are two terms which can refer to the same region or two regions that do not correspond to each other. South Central Coast (sometimes called "South Central Region") consists of the i ...

(South Central Coast) region. According to data extracted from General Statistics Office of Vietnam, there were 11,164 third-level (commune-level) administrative subdivisions. As of 2018 February, the number of third-level administrative subdivisions in Vietnam was 11,162. As of April 2023, the number of third-level units dropped to 10,598 units including 1,737 wards, 614 commune-level towns and 8,247 communes

History

Dynastic period

After ascending to the throne of Vietnam and established the Lê Dynasty,

divided the country into đạo 道 (province), phủ 府, huyện 縣 (district or county), and xã 社 (commune). The leader of the basic administrative unit xã was titled xã quan 社官 , later renamed xã trưởng 社長. Xã were classified as đại xã 大社, trung xã 中社 and tiểu xã 小社 based on their population. The

Nguyễn Dynasty The Nguyễn dynasty (, chữ Nôm: 茹阮, chữ Hán: 朝阮) was the last List of Vietnamese dynasties, Vietnamese dynasty, preceded by the Nguyễn lords and ruling unified Vietnam independently from 1802 until French protectorate in 1883 ...

(1802-1945) maintained xã as the smalles administrative unit. The name of the manager was renamed to lí trưởng 里長 by Emperor Minh Mạng in his 1831 administrative reforms. The lí trưởng was elected by villagers democratically among members of a legislative council called Hội đồng kỳ dịch or Hội đồng kỳ mục, which was made up of most educated people in the village. After successfully colonising

Cochinchina Cochinchina or Cochin-China (, ; ; ; ; ) is a historical exonym and endonym, exonym for part of Vietnam, depending on the contexts, usually for Southern Vietnam. Sometimes it referred to the whole of Vietnam, but it was commonly used to refer t ...

and the whole Vietnam, the French introduced reforms to the village councils, the latest of which saw the council shortened to a group of 7 members, however, the leader was selected among this group, not by villagers.

South Vietnam

Under the jurisdiction of

State of Vietnam The State of Vietnam (; chữ Hán: 國家越南; ) was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1949 until 1955, first as an associated state of the French Union and later as an independent state (from 20 July 1954 to 26 October 1955). The s ...

and South Vietnam, xã was the lowest administrative unit under quận (district). Xã existed in almost all urban and rural places in South Vietnam with the exception of

Saigon Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) ('','' TP.HCM; ), commonly known as Saigon (; ), is the most populous city in Vietnam with a population of around 14 million in 2025. The city's geography is defined by rivers and canals, of which the largest is Saigo ...

. For example, the city centre of Vĩnh Long town lied in the area of xã Long Châu, Châu Thành district, Vĩnh Long province, despite it was a vibrant town centre. Communes that reached a higher urbanisation status could be elevated to the status of

thị xã A district-level town () is a type of second tier subdivision of Vietnam. District-level towns along with urban districts, districts, municipal cities, and provincial cites have equal status. Also by virtue of Decree No. 42/2009/ND-CP, towns a ...

(literally 'urban commune') such as

Rạch Giá Rạch Giá () is a provincial city and the capital city of Kiên Giang province, Vietnam. It is located on the Eastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand, southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. East of city, it borders Tân Hiệp and Châu Thành town, t ...

, Biên Hòa,

Nha Trang Nha Trang ( or ; ) is a coastal city and capital of Khánh Hòa Province, on the South Central Coast of Vietnam. It is bounded on the north by Ninh Hoà town, on the south by Cam Ranh city and on the west by Diên Khánh District. The city had ...

. In such case, the xã was recognised as an autonomous unit in the same level as a province or a centrally-governed city. Politically, a xã was governed by a xã trưởng, usually a government official assigned by the District head. The xã trưởng was assisted by a hội đồng xã (commune council), made up of a sherriff, treasurer, administrative official and home affairs official. In 1957,

South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam (RVN; , VNCH), was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered Diplomatic recognition, international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the ...

ese President

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

launched a

counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN, or NATO spelling counter-insurgency) 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 ac ...

project known as

Strategic Hamlet Program The Strategic Hamlet Program (SHP; ) was implemented in 1962 by the government of South Vietnam, with advice and financing from the United States, during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency. The strategy was to isolate the rural pop ...

, 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" (), 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, decrease support for Diem's regime and increase sympathy for

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

efforts.

Socialist Republic of Vietnam

After reunifying the country, xã remains the lowest administratrive unit in Vietnam. It continues to be the name of the lowest administrative unit in a rural district as well as the rural outskirts of larger provincial towns and cities.

References

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