The Latest: Việt Nam has ordered provinces and cities to rapidly complete their plans for reorganizing villages and residential groups.
Under Directive 21, issued by the government on May 20, provincial and municipal people’s committees must finish:
- Developing a master plan for reorganizing villages and residential groups before June 10, or within the next 20 days.
- Complete the reorganization proposal for villages and residential groups and organize public consultations before June 30, or within the following 20 days.
Localities are already rushing to meet this tight deadline; for example, Đồng Văn Commune in Tuyên Quang Province is expected to merge its 69 villages into 20.
The Details: The government argues that the reorganization is necessary because many local areas “do not yet meet the prescribed criteria.” Furthermore, the number of villages and residential groups under each commune-level administrative unit surged after previous mergers, which is “creating management pressure” on local authorities.
The directive mandates that the reorganization must ensure “full consideration of specific historical, cultural, customary, national defense and security factors, as well as the natural cohesion of residential communities,” placing a strong emphasis on ethnic minority groups and religious areas.
Relatedly, the Ministry of Home Affairs is drafting a decree to set minimum household thresholds for establishing villages. For instance, in mountainous regions, the policy would require at least 300 households to form a single village. The draft also includes policies and benefits for part-time workers at the village and residential-group level.
The Background: The initiative was first set in motion by Prime Minister Lê Minh Hưng in the second half of April 2026. It is part of a broader roadmap to restructure and streamline the state apparatus from the central to local levels, following the rollout of the two-tier local government model that began on July 1, 2025.
This current push follows the highly contentious 2023-2025 administrative unit reorganization under National Assembly Resolution 35, where the renaming of newly formed villages also became a significant public concern.
Why It Matters: Associate Professor Dr. Trần Trọng Dương, a leading expert in Hán-Nôm studies, philology, and Vietnamese culture at Hà Nội University of Industry, told Dân Việt that “normally, a name is merely a designation. But when a name has existed for hundreds or thousands of years, it becomes a symbol.”
He explained that the survival of village names over centuries reflects the durability of village-level social organization, the human need for identity, and historically limited central government intervention.
“Village names therefore enter folk songs, customs, and the lives of generations of villagers. They are the very soul that sustains the enduring vitality of village culture in Việt Nam,” Associate Professor Dương said.
Hoàng Nam wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on May 21, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine has the copyrights of the English translation.
