The current flag of China dates back to 1949 when the communists took power
the new government, through newspapers, asked people to send in their designs for a new flag
requiring that they were mainly bright red and have Chinese characteristics.
Bright red of course has been the color of socialism for a couple of centuries, but I'll probably get into that in another video .
Anyway, over 3,000 people entered the competition
Mao himself supposedly prefered a flag with a yellow strip across, representing the Yellow River
but a man name Zeng Liansong designed the winning flag
however, they removed the hammer and sickle that he had added.
In the official explanation they say that the Chinese characteristics that were required were the colors of the star.
They're yellow because the Chinese race are yellow, but I think this is clutching at straws
but I'm just a little dubious about the official story all together
because it also says that Zeng was looking up at the sky at night, thought about an old Chinese proverb
and said that the communist party was the saving star of the Chinese people
but a lot of the proposals that were sent in feature a star
so unless all of these people were looking up at the sky at night and thought of the same Chinese proverb
it's probably safe to assume that the inspiration for using a star probably comes from the USSR and their red star.
Anyway, the larger star represents the communist party
and the four smaller stars represent the four social classes Mao aimed to unite as a part of his concept of new democracy .
Now that may be correct and it's hard to determine, but it seems like a very obscure explanation
especially because an earlier flag, that of The Republic of China, which was set up in 1911
made a deliberate choice to select five colors, so five was already important.
But first a little history
The Republic of China was established after the Xinhai Revolution
but the revolutionaries disagreed on which flag to use.
Most of the flags that they were using were designed by artists, political activists, and students while in exile.
One of which was the Blue Sky with the Sun. Although this was favored by Sun Yat-sen, later used by the KMT, and is still featured on the flag of Taiwan
it doesn't seem to have much real history to it.
It was designed by a man named Lu Haodong and the twelve points on the sun only seem to represent
the twelve months and therefore progress.
Another flag that was used during the Xinhai Revolution is the Iron and Blood flag.
The eighteen discs of the star represent the eighteen ethnically Han provinces of China.
So the people that favored this flag had some Han nationalistic tendencies
But it is the five colored flag that became the state flag and I find this flag the most interesting.
The five colors supposedly represent five major ethnicities of China.
Red being Han, yellow Manchu, blue Mongolian, black Tibetan, and white the Hui muslims.
So you could theorize that the five stars on the current Chinese flag also represent these ethnicities
Anyway, this flag became the state flag, the Iron and Blood flag became the army flag,
and the Blue Sky and White Sun flag became the flag of the navy.
While there was another flag that was used, but very rarely, and that was designed to show well-tilled fields
but looks a bit like a hashtag.
But I'm going to focus on the five colored flag because there is no definite explanation as to why these colors represent the ethnicities
so I had to do a little sleuthing.
Yellow for the Manchus sort of makes sense. It was after all the color of the Qing Dynasty flag
and the Manchus also created banner armies, armies divided into groups according to the color of their banners
and the most prestigious of which were yellow and the Manchus made up the bulk of these armies.
However yellow was often associated with royalty in China, even Ming emperors wore yellow robes
and there is the mythical Yellow Emperor.
So the Qing emperors could have just appropriated this tradition
Otherwise, going onto the red for Han. Han nationalists particularlly in the early 20th century
claimed that they were the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and the Flame Emperor
So the Han could be represented by red because of their connection to the red Flame Emperor.
As for the Mongolian blue, Genghis Khan came from the Borjigin tribe and that literally translates to blue wolf.
Plus the Mongolians used to follow Tengrism and still uphold some of its traditions
and central to this religion is the Great Blue Sky, and they still tie blue scarves to ovoos as sort of a nomadic version of a temple or alter.
In recent years in reenactments and celebrations most flags from the Mongolian Empire are blue.
This connection between tengrism and blue is also why the flag of East Turkestan, those in the west who want independence, chose a blue field
plus the ancient inhabitants of the area were known as the Göktürks and this literally translates to blue Turks.
The black and white however are a little more problematic because some early sources say
that the black was for the Hui muslims and white for Tibetans, while others say the opposite.
White and black could both be good fits for the Hui muslims, after all Muhammad apparently flew both a white and black banner
and they remained important colors throughout Islamic history
For instance there were the flags of the Umayyad, the Rashidun, and Abbasid dynasties
and they are both used in the pan-Arab flags, and infamously in the flag of ISIS.
But black and white doesn't really seem to represent the Tibetans at all
after all the current flag of Tibet, which was adopted shortly after the creation of the five races flag
features no black and white only represents the mountains.
However if you look at Tibetan prayer flags you will usually find five color: blue, green, white, red and yellow.
These colors, bar a little regional variation, form the basis of the Buddhist flag, a flag designed in the late 19th century by an American
but I'll get onto a little theory behind these colors in a little bit.
Generally speaking I don't believe these colors represent the ethnicities at all
Like I said before, sources couldn't agree as to whether or not black and white represent the Tibetans or Hui muslims
but even the blue can be disputed.
After all the Mongol Empire would more often than not use a tug banner made out of horse hair
and these were usually black or white. These colors apparently had their own meanings
white was raised during peace and black during war.
Plus contemporary sources and images show that they flew banners of various colors
and Mongol dynasties in other areas of the world used other colors. For instance, the Ilkhanate in Persia
apparently used a yellow banner, but that's according to the Catalan Atlas, not necessarily the most reliable source.
But either way I don't necessarily agree that blue was synonymous with the Mongols
Especially because if you look at the Qing dynasty banner armies, there were blue banners, but Mongols didn't necessarily make up the bulk of these.
and the same goes for the white and red banners, they weren't made up of mainly muslims or Han.
In fact there was one army which acted mainly like a police force which was made up of mainly Han troops
and this was the Green Standard army, so you could argue that Han should have been represented by green.
But keeping on the Hans, if you look at paintings of previous Han dynasties there doesn't seem to be any real color that they favored
in fact I've found more blue on the banners of Ming armies, but it seems that very few flags were the same.
That's the same for other dynasties like the Tang, they never chose one color flag over the other.
In fact for a long time in Chinese history the flags were just used to show the generals where the soldiers were
so I don't believe the official explanation of this flag at all.
Plus I don't even think that the revolutionaries were the first to use this flag. That's because there are images from the 19th century
more specifically the Taiping rebellion, that showed the flag being being flown by Qing dynasty troops.
And there is some evidence to suggest troops during the first Sino-Japanese war flew similar flags except blue was replaced by green
Maybe the republicans didn't know this and designed a very similar flag
However during the first Sino-Japanese war it was the Beiyang fleet that flew this flag
and many soldiers in the Beiyang army would join the revolutionaries and despite trying to crush the uprising
the leader of the Beiyang army, Yuan Shikai, would become China's first president.
While he did try to make himself emperor and created a new flag for this
but of course this colorful flag from the Qing dynasty had nothing to do with ethnicity
so I'm going to theorize that it had something to do with ancient Chinese beliefs.
In China they believe there were five elements and each of these elements had a color.
Water black, metal white, earth yellow, fire red, and and wood green
and this was a very important concept in China and influenced a great deal, from painting to traditional medicine
and this is also linked to the Tibetan buddhist prayer flags that I brought up before.
But each color not only represented an element, but also a planet, sensory organ, animal, etc.
Now four of these colors are found in the republican flag, however there is no green, there is blue
but I believe that these are interchangeable to some degree
for instance there are deities all of which have a color and this is where the Yellow Emperor belongs to
and one is sometimes called the green or blue deity, and there are five dragon gods which look after different bodies of water
well except the yellow dragon, he doesn't look after a specific body of water
Anyway there is no green dragon, there is a blue dragon or azure dragon.
This is the same dragon which features on the flag of the Qing dynasty and also one of the four mythical creatures that represented constellations.
Another one of these mythological creatures is the vermilion bird
and both of these are on the early Republic of China's coat of arms
Anyway, the azure dragon guards the Eastern Sea, and the east was usually associated with wood or the color green
So you can see there that blue and green are somewhat interchangeable
but even in the 20th century they seemed to be somewhat interchangeable, for instance when Japan invaded Manchuria in the 1930's
they created a new flag for Manchukuo
now these used the same colors as the early republic, however I found two reasons behind why they chose them.
The first I think further proves that these colors don't represent ethnicity
that is because the Japanese said that they represented ethnicities, however they represent completely different ethnicities
red on their flag did not represent Han, instead they represented the Japanese
blue was for the Han, not the mongols, and white was for the Mongols
but I did find a source that said they represented different locations and blue represented east.
So in short despite what many people say I don't think that the revolutionaries designed this flag
and I don't think that these colors represent ethnicities, but rather the elements
So the number five was important and that may be why the current flag of China has five stars
but the five stars on the current Chinese flag also helped influence the design of the Hong Kong and Macau flags
both of which were adopted in the early 90's.
Macau had a few proposals for their flag, many of which included green
the same green as on the Portuguese flag
but above the stylized bridge and lotus you see five stars
Hong Kong on the other hand adopted their flag to highlight their connection with China
so they picked red and there are five stars in the petals of the Hong Kong orchid tree.