Five stripes, one for each great people of China: the first flag of the Chinese republic wanted to show the five united in a single country.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Historical flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Civil and stateFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 5:8 ratio divided into five equal horizontal stripes, with no emblem at all.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
Lu Haodong drew the blue sky with the white sun in 1895
In 1911 a revolution ended the Qing dynasty, the last family of emperors
Five stripes of colour, one for each great people of the country: that was the flag…
The Five Races flag, national until the Nationalist government replaced it on 17 December 1928
It was called the ‘Five Races Flag’, and it must not be confused with the red flag of today’s…
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
Five stripes of colour, one for each great people of the country: that was the flag of the Republic of China between 1912 and 1928. It was called the ‘Five Races Flag’, and it must not be confused with the red flag of today’s China, which arrived in 1949.
In 1911 a revolution ended the Qing dynasty, the last family of emperors. The revolutionaries had not a single flag: each region used its own. When the republic was formed, the provisional Senate chose the five-stripe flag as the national one, and adopted it on 10 January 1912.
The idea was the ‘union of the five races’: that the Han, the Manchu, the Mongols, the Hui Muslims and the Tibetans should feel part of the same country. The five colours already had a long history: in the time of the Sui dynasty, about 1,400 years ago, Chinese military standards used five colours to represent the five elements.
The Five Races flag did not change its drawing. What changed was the flag of China before and after it.
1889-1912
The yellow dragon flag of the Qing Empire, which the revolution left behind.
1912-1928
The Five Races flag, national until the Nationalist government replaced it on 17 December 1928.
In 1912 the flags of the revolution were shared out: one for the country, another for the army and another for the navy.
No oficial · 1911
The rebels of Wuchang used it in 1911. Its 18 dots were the 18 provinces of traditional China. In 1912 it became the flag of the army.
Propuesta · 1895
Sun Yat-sen’s favourite, the father of the republic. Lu Haodong drew the blue sky with the white sun in 1895. In 1912 it was only the flag of the navy, but in 1928 it won: it is the one Taiwan still uses.
Each stripe represented one of the five great peoples of the republic.
Red
the Han, the majority people.
Yellow
the Manchu, the people of the Qing emperors.
Blue
the Mongols.
White
the Hui, the Chinese Muslims.
Black
the Tibetans.
Sun Yat-sen defended the union of the five peoples, but not this flag: he said that putting one colour on top of another suggested that some peoples were above others.
In 1912 the republic kept the three revolutionary flags: the five stripes for the country, the 18 stars for the army and the blue sky with the white sun for the navy.
After 1928, several states created by Japan in northern China, such as Manchukuo, used flags that copied the five stripes with other colours or another order.
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Test what you have read about the flag of Republic of China (1912-1928).
Text based on the article “Five Races Under One Union (Wikipedia en inglés)” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Original: en:Provisional Government of the Republic of China (1912) Vector: Kibinsky, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
