China is the world's most populous country and has the world's second-largest economy, home to one of history's longest continuous civilisations spanning over 5,000 years. The Great Wall, the Terracotta Army, the Forbidden City, and the Li River karst landscape are among its most iconic landmarks. China's 'Four Great Inventions' — paper, printing, gunpowder, and the compass — transformed human civilisation worldwide, and the country has been a centre of philosophical, scientific, and artistic achievement throughout recorded history.
Population and area are rounded.
Red stands for the communist revolution and yellow for the golden light of the Chinese nation. The large star represents the Communist Party, and the four smaller stars, each pointing towards it, the four social classes described by Mao Zedong: workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The flag was designed by Zeng Liansong and adopted in 1949.
Red with one large yellow star and four smaller yellow stars in the upper left.
China is the world's oldest continuous civilisation, with a recorded history of over 5,000 years.
China's flag is often mixed up with these. Learn to tell them apart:
Every flag that has flown over China, from today back through time.
Designed by Zeng Liansong and adopted in 1949, the large gold star represents the Communist Party while the four smaller stars represent the united classes of the Chinese people. The design was chosen from nearly 3,000 public submissions.
The "Blue Sky with a White Sun" canton — its twelve rays marking the twelve two-hour periods of the day — was adopted nationally in 1928 after the Kuomintang unified China. It remains the flag of Taiwan today.
The five stripes — red, yellow, blue, white, and black — stood for "Five Races Under One Union": the Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan peoples. It served the Beiyang government until the Northern Expedition.
The Azure Dragon chasing a red flaming pearl on a yellow field — yellow being the imperial color of the ruling house. An earlier triangular version dated to 1862 before the rectangular flag was standardized.
A Japanese-sponsored collaborationist government in occupied central China.
A Japanese puppet regime in northern China, a stepping stone to the wider invasion.
The Japanese puppet empire in Manchuria, fronted by Puyi, China's last emperor — dissolved when the USSR invaded in 1945.
The Chinese Soviet Republic, Mao Zedong's first base area, abandoned at the start of the Long March.
A short-lived republic declared on Taiwan to resist the island's cession to Japan; it lasted only months.
A Mongol khanate that ruled Tibet and installed the Fifth Dalai Lama's government before the Qing took control.
The Ming-loyalist kingdom founded on Taiwan by the warlord Koxinga, who expelled the Dutch — the first Han Chinese state to rule the island, until the Qing took it.
Empires, kingdoms and republics that once covered part of China.
The 'Yellow Dragon Flag' shows the Azure Dragon chasing a flaming pearl. It began as a triangular naval ensign in 1862 and became China's first true national flag in 1889.
The five stripes stood for the Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan peoples under the 'Five Races Under One Union' ideal, until the KMT's Blue Sky flag replaced it in 1928.
The Japanese puppet state's yellow flag with a four-color canton. Its head of state was Puyi — the same man who had been the last Qing emperor as a child.
The 'Snow Lion Flag' shows two snow lions holding a jewel before a sun over a snow mountain. Designed under the 13th Dalai Lama, it is banned in China today.
The vast quasi-Christian rebel kingdom whose civil war against the Qing killed an estimated 20 million people. It flew many ornate banners rather than one fixed flag.
China's first national ensign was a triangular 'Yellow Dragon Flag' adopted for the imperial navy in 1862, before the familiar rectangular version replaced it in 1889.
When president Yuan Shikai declared himself emperor in 1915, he revived a cross-and-stripes flag for his short-lived monarchy, which collapsed amid revolts within 83 days.
The early Republic's ornate state emblem, designed with input from the writer Lu Xun, combined the ancient Twelve Ornaments of imperial robes into a single republican coat of arms.
The Japanese-backed Mongol puppet state in Inner Mongolia flew a striped flag whose bands stood for the Mongol, Han, Japanese, Manchu, and Hui peoples it claimed to unite.
A short-lived Islamic republic proclaimed at Kashgar in Xinjiang, flying the sky-blue Kökbayraq with a white crescent and star, crushed within months by Chinese and Soviet-backed forces.
A Soviet-supported Uyghur and Kazakh republic in northern Xinjiang, absorbed into the People's Republic of China in 1949 after its leaders died in a mysterious plane crash.
A former British colony returned to China in 1997, governed under 'one country, two systems' with its own legal system and currency. Its red flag bears a white five-petalled bauhinia flower.
A former Portuguese territory returned to China in 1999, also under 'one country, two systems'. The world's biggest gambling hub, its green flag shows a lotus over the Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge.
The 2 states, provinces and regions of China with their own flags.
Hong Kong
MacaoChina shares a land border with 14 countries: Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam.
Afghanistan
Bhutan
India
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Mongolia
Myanmar
Nepal
North Korea
Pakistan
Russia
Tajikistan
Vietnam
5 other national flags use the same main colours as China's.
Play Globalio and learn China's flag
Burkina Faso
Turkey
Montenegro
North Macedonia
Spain