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Red River Delta

Modern Vietnam can be divided into three regions (North, Center, and South), according to the Statistics Directory of 2009, issued by the Vietnamese General Department of Statistics. The North includes the Red River Delta (11 provinces) and Northern mountainous areas (14 provinces). The Center includes the Northern Central areas and coastal areas in the Center (14 provinces) and the Highlands (5 provinces). The South includes the South Eastern areas (6 provinces) and the Mekong Delta (13 provinces). After the 1986 economic reforms in Vietnam, cash crop agriculture such as farmed shrimp expanded and intensified in the Red River Delta.

The Red River rises is Yunnan Province, South China. It flows 730 miles (1175 km) in a generally southeast direction through deep, narrow gorges. Near the city of Hanoi (not on image), the river forms its large delta. The Red River carries a large quantity of silt rich in iron oxide that gives it a red color. The river has an irregular flow and is subject to flooding, especially during the June-October high water period. Dikes and canals have been built to protect the delta from flooding. The Red River empties into the Gulf of Tonkin (South China Sea). Rice is the principal crop of the delta region. Vietnam's Red River Delta region is vulnerable to river flooding, tidal effects and storm surges from tropical systems moving across the South China Sea.

Located in the northeast region of Vietnam, the Red River Delta covers 9,900 mi2 (16,000 km2) and is one of the country's two major agricultural regions. The Delta itself, drained by a vast network of canals and waterways, is a rich rice-growing area. Far more extensive but less productive are the forested highlands, projecting southward from the Yunnan plateau. These highlands, in their southern portion along the boundary with Laos, form a complex mountain system called the Chaine Annamitique. The break between the Delta and the highlands provides a sharp contrast in physical geography between an alluvial plain and a mountainous area. The contrast is even more sharp and distinct in terms of distribution of the population and of the patterns of thought and behavior of the inhabitants.

The Red River Delta is a flat, triangular region, smaller but more intensively developed than is the Mekong River Delta of South Vietnam. It stretches some 150 miles inland and about 75 miles along the coast, south of Haiphong. Almost entirely built up of alluvium, the Delta was formerly an extension of the Gulf of Tonkin, which has since been filled by the deposits of the rivers which run into the basin. The coast is indented by the mouths of the Red River and lesser streams to the south.

The Red River, rising in Yunnan Province in Communist China, has a total length of about 725 miles. Its two major tributaries, the Song Lo (sometimes called the Lo River, sometimes Riviere Claire, and sometimes Clear River) and the Black River (Song Da in Vietnamese), give it a large flow of water during the rainy season as much as 800,000 cubic feet per second, or twice as much as the maximum flow of the Nile River in Egypt. The entire delta region, backed. by the steep rises of the forested highlands, has only minor variations in relief, chiefly in the west. Most of it is no more than 10 feet above sea level, and much of it is 5 feet or less. The area is subject to frequent flooding. At some places the high-water mark of floods is 25 feet above the surrounding countryside.

Over the centuries an elabora,te system of dikes and canals has been built to contain the Red River and drain off its waters into the ricefields. This ancient system, modeled on that of China, sustains a high concentration of population. Intensive agriculture, based on wet-rice production, makes double-cropping possible over about half the region. The remaining irrigable lowlands, strung along the coast south of the Delta, are distinctly limited. Their soil, however, is extremely fer,tile alluvium, making excellent riceland.

Urban development is minimal. Even in the most densely populated regions of the Red River Delta, most of the inhabitants are distributed throughout the countryside in small, closely spaced villages and hamlets. These settlements, mostly situated on levees, embankments or sandspits, are of varied arrangement, with elongated settlements along the river banks and clustered farmsteads at the base of a hillside among the more commonplace types.

The Red River Delta, with an area of approximately 6,000 square miles, had population densities among the highest in the world. Three cities of the Delta accounted for a major share of the urban population. Hanoi, with a normal population of 1.2 million, according to North Vietnamese sources, lies 100 miles inland near the head of the Delta proper. Haiphong, the chief· seaport, is situated about 55 miles almost due east of the capital on one of the many mouths of the same river. Nam Dinh, an industrial center in Nam Ha Province, lying about 20 miles inland from the coast, is the third largest city.

In sharp contrast to the congested lowlands, the inhospitable uplands enclosing them are sparsely populated. An intensive government campaign in the 1960's to clear new agricultural land, however, has brought hundreds of thousands of persons into the area. Efforts in carrying out this program were sharply increased in 1965 as a reaction to United states aerial attacks. Many people were moved from cities and other congested areas to minimize vulnerable concentrations and to reduce the requirements placed on transportation facilities, which were being heavily damaged by aerial bombs.

In response to Soviet accusations that the United States had conducted a two-month bombing campaign intentionally to destroy the dikes and dams of the Tonkin Delta in North Vietnam, a CIA report is made public July 28, 1972 by the Nixon administration. The report revealed that U.S. bombing at 12 locations had in fact caused accidental minor damage to North Vietnam's dikes, but the damage was unintentional and the dikes were not the intended targets of the bombings. The nearly 2,000 miles of dikes on the Tonkin plain, and more than 2,000 along the sea, made civilized life possible in the Red River Delta. Had the dikes been intentionally targeted, their destruction would have destroyed centuries of patient work and caused the drowning or starvation of hundreds of thousands of peasants. Bombing the dikes had been advocated by some U.S. strategists since the beginning of U.S. involvement in the war, but had been rejected outright by U.S. presidents sitting during the war as an act of terrorism.