Red River Delta
Red River Delta
Đồng bằng sông Hồng | |
|---|---|
Location of the Red River Delta region in Vietnam | |
| Country | Vietnam |
| Area | |
• Total | 27,091.97 km2 (10,460.27 sq mi) |
| Population (2025) | |
• Total | 29,093,925 |
| • Density | 1,073.895/km2 (2,781.375/sq mi) |
| GDP | |
| • Total | VND 1,753 trillion US$ 77.0 billion (2021) |
| Time zone | UTC+7 (UTC +7) |
| HDI (2023) | 0.809 high · 1st |
The Red River Delta or Hong River Delta (Vietnamese: Đồng bằng sông Hồng) 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". The delta has the smallest area but highest population and population density of all regions in Vietnam. The region, measuring some 15,000 square kilometres (6,000 sq mi) is well protected by a network of dikes. It is an agriculturally rich and densely populated area. Most of the land is devoted to rice cultivation.
The Red River Delta, after the 2025 merger of Vietnamese provinces and cities, includes four provinces, together with two municipalities (the capital Hanoi, and the port of Haiphong). It had a population of almost 23 million in 2019.
In 2021, Paul Sidwell proposed that the locus of Proto-Austroasiatic languages was in this area about 4,000–4,500 years before present. The Hong River Delta is the cradle of the Vietnamese nation. Water puppetry originated in the rice paddies here. The region was bombed by United States warplanes during the Vietnam War. The region was designated as the Red River Delta Biosphere Reserve as part of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme in 2004.