Chinese Ha'erbin or Ha-erh-pin
City (pop., 1999 est.: 2,586,978), capital and largest city of Heilongjiang province, northeastern China.
Located on the Songhua River in the centre of Manchuria , it grew with the arrival of the Chinese Eastern Railway, built by the Russians in the late 19th century. A Russian military base during the Russo-Japanese War , it was a haven for Russian refugees after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and had the largest Russian population of any city outside the Soviet Union. Chinese communist forces took the city in 1946 and from it directed their conquest of Manchuria. Since 1949 it has become the chief industrial base of northeastern China, and it is a shipping centre for agricultural products.