r/vexillology • u/zelenisok • Jan 27 '26
Redesigns New Chinese flag after a regime change
There were topics about alternative Chinese flags, and I had this pretty simple idea for a new Chinese flag when there is a new regime, the regime is liberal democratic, and forms close ties with the EU.
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u/JesusSwag Suriname Jan 27 '26
The 4 small stars represent the different classes, and the large star represents the CCP. You could obviously just say that it represents the nation instead, but I doubt a 'liberal democratic' China would have such an emphasis on class
And either way, overall, it seems a bit too on-the-nose for a country's flag to go from red to blue due to a regime change (when that's the only change)
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u/UltraTata Qing Dynasty (1889-1912) Jan 28 '26
Chinese culture has a very good record of respecting the heritage of previous regimes including the immediately prior to the current one. Although I do agree that just changing the bg color is unlikely, preserving some of the symbology of the previous government wouldn't be as crazy in China as it would be somewhere else.
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u/JesusSwag Suriname Jan 28 '26
Chinese culture has a very good record of respecting the heritage of previous regimes including the immediately prior to the current one.
Can you give an example?
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u/Achilles-Angler Jan 28 '26
The flag of the Beiyang Republic (early RoC) was the “Five Races Under One Union” flag which was a common banner used to represent the Qing dynasty before the standardized national flag with the dragon on it. A very similar design was the flag of the navy.
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u/JesusSwag Suriname Jan 28 '26
From what I can tell, some iteration of that design had existed for hundreds and hundreds of years before the Qing dynasty, when it represented 'elements' rather than ethnicities, and the 'Five Races Under One Union' concept only came about with the advent of the ROC
So I don't think there was much of an ideology associated with it beforehand, in contrast to China's current flag which absolutely has a specific ideology associated with it that would necessitate a significant change to represent a significant change in ideology
I'm sure they could still incorporate stars somehow (and giving them a different meaning), but certainly not by just changing the colour of the background
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u/ThatOneBloke4 Canada Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
Wasn't that mostly new dynasties trying to legitimize themselves? If so, I don't a reason why a new democratic state would try to tie itself to a one party dictatorship.
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u/travelingpinguis Canada • British Hong Kong Jan 28 '26
A free China presumably would free itself from the tie of the old regime. May that day be near.
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u/Woutrou South Holland • Netherlands (VOC) Jan 28 '26
They could go with three stars for Sun-Yat-Sen's three principles
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u/Nobusuke_Tagomi Portugal Jan 28 '26
It's clear that OP did zero research. It's a low effort redesign.
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Jan 29 '26
Yes, the current flag means the four starts (the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie) all following the lead of CCP. So this flag will mean China is still a one-party system,
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u/gregorydgraham Jan 28 '26
Wasn’t it 5 cultures with the Han being the biggest?
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u/JesusSwag Suriname Jan 28 '26
No, that's a common misconception based on the Five Races flag used by the ROC
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u/SlavaCocaini Jan 28 '26
China is already liberal and democratic though.
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u/Own_Organization156 Jan 29 '26
Its democratic but in no wey liberal
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u/SlavaCocaini Jan 29 '26
It's actually more liberal than capitalism because it is actually egalitarian.
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u/Own_Organization156 Jan 29 '26
I agree with egalitarian thing but liberal egalitarianism is really spacific thing aka egalitarianism is promoted trugh coltural values but market is not interfered with china is much cless to lenins nep period ussr or tito era yugoslavia as stete directly controls the market with iron grip if you wulde like to meke thet claim bether candidate fore it wulde be vietnam
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u/SlavaCocaini Jan 29 '26
The majority of the market isn't regulated in China, only the at the most atmospheric levels, even if you count state ownership.
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u/kvn_th1905 Jan 28 '26
Maybe they could also represent the Han/Manchus/Mongols/Hui/Tibetians, especially if another small star is added with the big one symbolising unity of the united republic yk? It would also not erase the communist past completely, showing it as part of modern China history and Identity
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u/Mungo87 Jan 27 '26
Think they’re keen on the red
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u/DazSamueru Jan 28 '26
Historically China has historically been associated with Yellow (because of the river). Maybe they wouldn't chose that because of monarchical overtones, but if not, I think they might go with the old 5 colour flag.
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u/kevo31415 Kazakhstan Jan 28 '26
Yellow symbolized the Emperor and Imperial China, but red is a more contemporary and meaningful color. Culturally it symbolizes prosperity and happiness. The reason traditional wedding dresses and wedding decorations are red isn't because of communism.
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u/Dschuncks Jan 27 '26
Only because of the Communist Party. Red is a good luck color, but it's also linked to Communism generally. It's like how the flag was Yellow when it was an empire because yellow is a symbolic color of imperial authority and royal power.
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u/Artur_Mills Jan 27 '26
and what does blue represent?
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u/Dschuncks Jan 28 '26
Blue and green don't traditionally have distinct words, so the things they associated with blue are things we'd associate with green - growth, harmony, health, prosperity.
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u/FoRiZon3 Jan 28 '26
Okay now lets see the Taiwan flag...oh
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u/Dschuncks Jan 28 '26
I'm not saying they'll cut out the red entirely. It would certainly be there in some capacity, I just don't think a regime change would keep an almost entirely red flag.
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u/galatheaofthespheres Jan 28 '26
You see, communism is when red, and democracy is when blue.
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u/WASDKUG_tr Kurdistan • Ottoman Empire Jan 28 '26
Holt shit guys, this means the Republicans in the USA are COMMUNIST?!?!
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u/bluntpencil2001 Jan 28 '26
America gets the colours wrong to be fair. Everywhere else is left red right blue.
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u/ihathtelekinesis Jan 28 '26
Wasn’t that just because for the 2000 presidential election just happening to use those colours that way round that year, and the result meaning that the electoral map appeared far more often than usual?
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u/PragmaticPidgeon Jan 28 '26
Ooooor we could just leave the Chinese alone, and let them run the country they want?
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u/JoyBus147 Jan 28 '26
"Yeah, I'm a Marxist, but more of the libertarian variety. Wouldn't say I'm a defender of the USSR or China, I think they were and are state capitalist countries run by the ruling party's bureaucracy rather than by the workers themselves. In many ways, my politics are much closer to anarchis--"
sees this post
"...so hail Mao, hail Xi, the glorious People's Republic shall never fall to Western imperialists, wéi rénmín fúwù, etc etc."
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u/ike_mi Jan 28 '26
I don't particularly like post-Deng china in its current state, but every time I see stuff like this I instantly animorph into Xi Jinping's strongest defender
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u/Puchainita Jan 28 '26
All I do to take this away from me is bring up Stalin and then have them argue which each other about whether “it was real socialism or not”. Is the communism of Schrödinger. Is the same hypocrisy happening with Iran and Venezuela rn.
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u/Queasy-Impress2622 Jan 27 '26
They would absolutely not keep this design in the event of a regime change. Most likely if it’s a democratic one, they’d take the Taiwanese flag or the Five Races flag.
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u/LuoBiDaFaZeWeiDa Jan 28 '26
This is a bad idea. Old flags don't evoke a sense of tradition in China. By using an old flag, the regime appears to lack legitimacy, and thus it seeks legitimacy only in its symbols.
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u/Dotch_Crimson Jan 28 '26
Barf. And a wild misunderstanding of the symbolism of the China flag, but that’s to be expected from someone that would think a neoliberal Chinese project would be a good idea. Especially after the insane month we’ve had where the intense and inherent flaws of such a thing have been laid bare.
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u/GriffinFTW Georgia (US) • Mississippi Jan 28 '26
This is actually not too far off from the flag of the New Federal State of China.
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u/Duriano_D1G3 China (1912) • Spain (1936) Jan 28 '26
I still have no idea what this flag is supposed to represent...
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u/ConsiderationSame919 Jan 28 '26
When China's accusing the US of foreign interference, these kind of organisations are exactly what they mean, just wow.
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u/pagliacciverso Jan 27 '26
Bad ending: the great China is now soc-dem slop. All glory to the status quo and the powerful oligarchs
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u/as0rb Jan 28 '26
I pray for a time when Libs will look back on how they glazed these weak neoliberal democracies and feel ashamed of the appraisals they gave.
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u/Athingthatdoesstuff Jan 28 '26
soc-dem
neoliberal
Which one is it then?
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u/as0rb Jan 28 '26
They established themselves as social democracies and have slowly taken more and more neoliberal policies to the point where they identify themselves as social democracies but mostly partake in neoliberal agendas nowadays.
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Jan 28 '26
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u/jjballlz Jan 28 '26
No, this will be the new EU flag once our politicians grow the balls Canadian Marx did
Edit : and let me tell you, I can't wait to have dirt cheap BYD's
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u/10vernothin Jan 28 '26
blue's not really a Chinese color.
red background is traditional, like the celebratory paper that one writes during Chinese New Year
There is a tradition of words on paper, and Chinese is one of the oldest writing systems in the world.
Chinese is well-known to write up-down.
My guess for a non-communist Chinese flag is a Deep Red flag with a big black Chinese character representative of the newest Dynasty/Regime name in black written vertically in the middle, with a stylized golden dragon and a golden phoenix flanking either side, mimicking Chinese embroidery, creating a banner-style flag.
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u/Big_Ad_6039 Chubut • Basque Country Jan 28 '26
you mean colonialism? why not just sticking a pirate flag (🇬🇧) in the corner and call it a day, for that matter?
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u/1bird2birds3birds4 Jan 28 '26
Colonialism is when I make my flag blue
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u/Derpydudeguy Jan 28 '26
Colonialism is when I advocate for foreign regime changes and start drawing flags as if they're under European liberal control as a good thing
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u/mastocles Jan 27 '26
No bringing back Mr. Qinglong? I love the European Union but that dapper dragon is too cool to not come back!
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u/Vlach719 Jan 27 '26
The Qing dynasty was Manchurian. The Han Chinese men in the Qing dynasty had to wear a braid called a queue and if they didn't they could literally get executed
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u/Character_Ranger1280 Jan 27 '26
That would be like putting the russian imperial eagle over the German flag
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u/deletedchannel Jan 28 '26
This looks really good and also feels massively unsettling for some reason…
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u/LavaKing60 Thessaloniki • Byzantine Empire Jan 28 '26
Belgian Congo but it dislocated its face and grew extra eyes
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u/DefDefTotheIOF Jan 29 '26
OH HELL YEA BOYZ, WERE BRINGING FAMINE BACK IN STYLE!!!
800 million instantly dropped below the poverty line, but can you imagine how rich 50 or so white westerners will get under a liberal China!
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u/ClockworkOrdinator Jan 30 '26
I hate this but it made the most annoying people on the planet seethe with baby rage so you get a pass op.
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u/Exploding_Antelope Earth (Pernefeldt) Jan 28 '26
European Union but it’s just 5 countries and one is bigger
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u/JackReedTheSyndie Taiwan Jan 28 '26
Should remove the top two small stars that represents working class and peasantry.
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u/Derpydudeguy Jan 28 '26
I think if China were ever to fall to European imperialism again under capitalism all the stars would need to dissapear because liberals never recognize classes in the marxist sense, otherwise they would just call themselves the bourgeoisie party. That would of course, be pretty bad PR.
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u/forever-and-a-day Jan 28 '26
I imagine they would just restore the old symbols of feudalism and call it a day like they did in Russia after the fall of the USSR. Hopefully it never comes to that though, the world will be a lot worse off without socialist China.
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u/Chewy598 Austria (1804) Jan 28 '26
Now known as the Democratic Republic of China (DRC/China-Beijing)
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u/Remote-Cow5867 Jan 28 '26
This could be a cool flag for Republic of China - China mainland as the largest star, the 4 small star represent Taiwan, HK, Macau and Mongolia.
The blue sky white star ROC flag should be given (or returned?) to China mainland.
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u/kqi_walliams Jan 28 '26
Is this fictional or the 3rd? 4th? time this year I found out about major global news on Reddit
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u/Game_And_Walk Jan 28 '26
This would not be the flag. The stars represent the government controlling the large corporations. In a liberal "democracy", the corporations control the government, so the left star would be smaller and the bottom right star would be bigger (it represents the national bourgeoisie).
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u/Cats7204 Jan 28 '26
I think depending on how the new regime tackles the China-Taiwan situation (Do they unify under the name "Republic of China" or do they stay as separate states), they'd go for the current Taiwanese flag or a completely different flag with no relation to either of them.
I see the new flag having yellow, as the traditional color of China, maybe red since it's also very used in Chinese culture, and blue as a color that's now associated with Europe, the West, and democracy in general; but it would not have the stars in the same position as the PRC flag, it's too similar and it doesn't make sense with the current meaning of them (Classes united under a one-party state, too communist and authoritarian for the new regime).
Contrary to most commenters, I don't think this regime would reutilize the five-colored flag for the same reason it was abandoned in favor of the ROC flag. It still implies a hierarchy of races and it's too associated with the political and social instability of the warlord era. While modern China still has race problems, it's not the main focus of the Chinese liberals anymore, and I don't think that a liberal-democratic regime would proritize fixing the issues racial minorities face in China. Finally, that flag in the Chinese society has been tainted with the Japanese occupation, the new regime wouldn't want to be associated with fascism, that's why if it doesn't reunify with Taiwan they'll probably just make their own original flag. The new regime may want to show that their system is a new era for China, so reutilizing stuff from the past is not the point.
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u/kkkk22601 Jan 28 '26
I mean, if China does become democratic, it'll probably go back to using the old Republic of China Flag that existed when Sun Yat Sen was still around.
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u/VirtualFallacy Jan 29 '26
Considering the cultural significance of red in China, and the political significance of the stars, I feel like it'd be far more likely to stay red (or still include it) but with a totally different design. This just looks like if the EU or US took over China and redesigned their flag for them lol
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u/Lucky-Ad1855 Jan 29 '26
This is possible after the seizure of Beijing by Taiwan, and decommunization
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u/Zestyclose_Might8941 Jan 29 '26
Interesting flag that still includes all of the other elements of communist iconography (stars equal the revolutionary classes).
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Jan 29 '26
That will be nonsense. The current flag means the four starts (the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie) all following the lead of CCP. So this flag will mean China is still a one-party system,
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u/SpiritualPackage3797 Jan 31 '26
Ok, that's one use for it. But my first thought was, "Blue is the color of Aristocracy, so this is the flag for when they decide to just admit that they're an Oligarchy, and stop pretending to be Communist".
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u/Jurooo3001 Feb 11 '26
When the regime would change they would take maybe something in the style of the Taiwanese flag.
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u/shadowfax12221 Jan 28 '26
They could do 4 stars without the big star and just keep the flag red since red is an auspicious color in Chines culture anyway. Going full EU would involve a lot of repainting.
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u/Puchainita Jan 28 '26
The stars literally have communist symbology in it. Ironically the color red has more cultural significance in China asides from communism than the stars.
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u/dreamlikes7 Jan 28 '26
Well that's just fucking stupidity.
Why would they most successful communist nation abandon that way of life in favour of what has led India to fuck all.
China and India started at roughly the same point post WW2, one is a world leader and a superpower, the other is a capitalist hellscape with rampant poverty and religious discrimination being rampant.
Instead I propose the EU changes their flag to red and puts a hammer and sickle on it
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u/someguysmells Jan 28 '26
his cooler older brother
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u/vecpisit Jan 28 '26
This flag was represent KMT party than ROC so it changed into current ROC as red in flag mean people blood who die during xinhai revolution and meant to be relate with chinese people in general.
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Jan 28 '26
Very nice!! But I’d tweak it a little bit, i think that you should make every star the same size. And after that add on 7 more stars to represent the ethnic groups. Then arrange those stars in a circle and then after that ensure that the stars are pointing upwards in the same direction
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u/Ninja0428 Jan 28 '26
I think a democratic China would have a flag completely different from anything that came before, as old symbols would all be considered "tainted"
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u/zelenisok Jan 28 '26
Some people are saying the stars are not good because their symbolism is CCP, and a new lib-dem regime wouldn't keep them like that, so here's maybe an alternative version, where there are five starts of equal importance, representing the "five nations" of China, similar to the older flag, and they are arranged in a plus-like manner representing the Chinese symbol zhong, which is (a part of) the name of China.
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u/Puchainita Jan 28 '26
Five pointed stars represent nations is so western, China has so much potential for using its own symbols, look at the flag of Mongolia or Korea, they use ancient symbols important for their cultures. This is a forgettable as the flags of Kosovo, Cyprus and Bosnia.
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u/bluntpencil2001 Jan 28 '26
Could just go with a yellow star in the centre, as the cross is too Christian.
The star has five points, each a nation.
So it'd be a blue Vietnamese flag.
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u/Connecticut_Mapping Connecticut • São Paulo State Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Why not use their 1925-1949 flag? 🇹🇼
The Republic of China.
Edit: I replied to a reply with this so read it: “It was Authoritarian and Far-Right, a far cry from Democracy but Sun Yat-Sen, China’s founder wanted to use this flag for a united Democratic China.” Sun Yat-Sen wanted a democratic China but his successors betrayed his ideals for a Authoritarian Dictatorship
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u/Knusprige-Ente Jan 27 '26
This post was fact checked by Ursula von der Leyen