--The canton (upper corner on the hoist side) originated from the "Blue Sky with a White Sun flag" (青天白日旗; qīngtiān báirì qí) designed by Lu Haodong, a martyr of the 1911 Revolution.

Lu Hao-tung's "Blue Sky with a White Sun" flag was used in the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou.

In Shanghai and northern China, a "Five-Colored Flag" (五色旗; wǔ sè qí) (Five Races Under One Union flag) was used of five horizontal stripes representing the five major nationalities of China: the Han (red), the Manchu (yellow), the Mongol (blue), the Hui (white), and the Tibetan (black).

[7] Sun Yat-sen, however, did not consider the five-colored flag appropriate, reasoning that horizontal order implied a hierarchy or class like that which existed during dynastic times.

As a compromise, the Japanese suggested adding a triangular yellow pennant on top with the slogan "Peace, Anticommunism, National Construction" (和平反共建國; Hépíng fǎngòng jiàn guó) in black, but this was rejected by Wang.

On the mainland, CCP forces of Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China (PRC) and adopted their own national flag.

[9] On 4 July 1949, the sixth working group of the Preparatory Committee of the New Political Consultative Conference (新政治協商會議籌備會, PCNPCC) created a notice to submit designs for the national flag.

The idea for four small stars came from "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship", a speech by Mao Zedong, which defined the Chinese people as consisting of four social classes, also traditionally referred to in Asian cultures as the four occupations (士農工商, shì nóng gōng shāng) ("Scholars, Peasants, Workers, Merchants").

[18] According to earlier discussions at the Beijing Hotel, the hammer and sickle from Zeng's original design was removed since it was similar to the flag of the Soviet Union.

[20] The flag was officially unveiled and raised for the first time by Mao Zedong in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on 1 October 1949, at the formal announcement of the People's Republic of China.

The first flag flown over Tiananmen Square was sewn together by Zhao Wenrui (赵文瑞), a seamstress who finished the task around 1 pm on 30 September.

[21] Zeng had a hard time believing that his design was picked, due to the missing hammer and sickle from the giant star.

However, he was officially congratulated by the General Office of the Central People's Government as the designer of the flag and received 5 million yuan for his work.

[23] It is sometimes stated that the five stars of the flag represent the five largest ethnic groups: Han Chinese, Zhuangs, Hui people, Manchus and Uyghurs.

[24][25] This is generally regarded as an erroneous conflation with the "Five Races Under One Union" flag, used 1912–28 by the Beiyang Government of Republic of China, whose different-colored stripes represented the Han Chinese, Hui people, Manchus, Mongols and Tibetans.

[24][26] The construction sheet for the national flag was published on 28 September 1949 by an order from the Presidium of the First Plenary Session of the CPPCC.

[28] During the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, flags that failed to adhere to the regulations were used in connection with China.

[34] The specific colors used, in the sRGB space of the PNG file, are:[35] The Flag of China is represented as the Unicode emoji sequence U+1F1E8 🇨 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER C and U+1F1F3 🇳 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER N.[36] The current law about the national flag was passed by 14th Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Seventh National People's Congress on 28 June 1990 and was enforced starting 1 October 1990.

The penal code[37] provides for imprisonment up to three years, criminal detention, public surveillance, or deprivation of political rights for "whoever desecrates the National Flag or the National Emblem of the People's Republic of China by intentionally burning, mutilating, scrawling on, defiling or trampling upon it in a public place".

He had been seen turning representations of the flags (not of standard dimensions) upside down in the legislative chamber in October of the previous year.

[42][43] The Flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region features a stylized, white, five-petal Bauhinia blakeana flower in the center of a red field.

[42] The flag was first officially hoisted on 1 July 1997, in the handover ceremony marking the transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China.

[47] The Regional flag of the Macau Special Administrative Region is "Macau green" with a lotus flower above a stylized image of the Governor Nobre de Carvalho Bridge and water in white, beneath an arc of five gold, five-pointed stars: one large star in the center of the arc and four smaller ones.

[50] The flag was first officially hoisted on 20 December 1999, in the handover ceremony marking the transfer of sovereignty from Portugal to China.

The characters "八一" (literally "eight one") pay homage to the events on 1 August 1927 (8th month, 1st day); this was when the PLA was created by the CCP to start their rebellion against the Kuomintang Government in Nanchang.

[58] After the CCP was founded in 1920, various sections of the party made flags based on what the Bolsheviks used, producing various designs and patterns.

On that date, the CCP Central Committee Political Bureau issued a decree announcing the flag and the pattern it should follow.

A 20 centimeters (7.9 in) triangle is cut out of the fly edge of the flag and the golden emblem is shifted closer towards the hoist.