Saigon had, in 1929, a population of 123,890, including 12,100 French. In 1931, a new région called Saïgon–Cholon consisting of Saïgon and Cholon was formed. Saïgon and Cholon, meanwhile, remained separate cities with their respective mayors and municipal councils. In 1956, after South Vietnam's independence from France in 1955, the région of Saïgon–Cholon became a single city called Saïgon following the merger of the two cities of Saïgon and Cholon. The Viet Minh proclaimed the independence of Vietnam in 1945 after a combined occupation by Vichy France and Japan, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. The Viet Minh-held sections of Vietnam were more concentrated in rural areas. Following the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the abandonment of anti-colonialist policies, the U.S. (in an attempt to control the spread of communism) supported France in regaining its control over the country, with effective control spanning mostly in the Southern half and parts of the Red River Delta region like Hanoi, Haiphong and Thái Bình. Former Emperor Bảo Đại made Saigon the capital of the State of Vietnam in 1949 with himself as head of state. In 1954, the Geneva Agreement partitioned Vietnam along the 17th parallel (Bến Hải River), with the communist Việt Minh, under Ho Chi Minh, gaining complete control of the northern half of the country, while the Saigon government continued to govern the State of Vietnam which continued in the southern half of the country and the southern half gaining independence from France. The State officially became the Republic of Vietnam when Bảo Đại was deposed by his Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm in the 1955 referendum. Saigon and Cholon, an adjacent city with mostly Sino-Vietnamese residents, were combined into an administrative unit known as the "Đô Thành Sài Gòn" ("Capital City Saigon"), or "Thủ đô Sài Gòn" ("National Capital Saigon"). South Vietnam was a capitalist and anti-communist state which fought against the communist North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong proxy forces during the Vietnam War, with the assistance of the United States and other countries.