City,
northern Vietnam. It lies on the northeastern edge of the Red River delta,
beside a distributary of the Thai Binh River, 10 miles (16 km) from the Gulf of
Tonkin. It is the outport of the capital, Hanoi, 37 miles (60 km) west, and is
the nation's third largest city. Haiphong became a seaport in 1874, and through
the French colonial period it developed commercially as a port and as the
southeastern terminus of the railway coming through K'un-ming (in southwestern
China), Lao Cai, and Hanoi. It became a leading industrial centre powered by coal from the mines across the Gulf of Tonkin at
Quang Ninh. After 1954, many new industrial plants were built in the city with
aid given by Soviet-bloc countries and by China. Haiphong sustained heavy damage
from U.S. bombing raids in the early 1970s but was subsequently rebuilt. Pop.
(1979) 330,755.
