Flag of Vietnam

How to read it

Article 13 of the 2013 constitution says the national flag is rectangular, two thirds as high as it is long, with a five-pointed gold star in the middle of a red field. Guidance from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (No. 3420/HD-BVHTTDL), as Báo Lào Cai sets it out, puts the centre of the star where the flag’s diagonals cross and its points one fifth of the flag’s length from that centre, with one point straight up towards the top of the pole and the arms drawn with straight edges, not bulging. The field is bright red and the star bright yellow, and the star matches exactly on both sides. The red flag with the yellow star became the flag of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam by President Ho Chi Minh’s decree of 5 September 1945, was approved by the National Assembly on 2 March 1946 and written into the constitution later that year. In the summer of 1976 the National Assembly of the reunited country kept it as the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Báo Quân khu 7 records.

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The 1940 uprising and the design

The flag first flew in the uprising in Cochinchina, the south of the country, on 23 November 1940. Báo Quân khu 7 writes that the Party Committee for Cochinchina decided to use a red flag with a yellow star for the uprising and gave Nguyễn Hữu Tiến the task of designing it. According to the writer Sơn Tùng’s book about him, first published in 1981, Tiến explained the flag in a poem: the field deep red with blood shed for the country, the star the yellow of the people’s skin; the five points stood for scholars, farmers, workers, traders and soldiers, united, VnExpress reports. In September 1941 the programme of the Việt Minh named the red flag with the five-pointed yellow star as the future national flag.

Who designed the flag has been argued over, VnExpress notes. At a conference in April 2021, Trần Minh Trưởng, a former director of the Institute of Hồ Chí Minh and the Party Leaders, said Tiến was its author.

The star of 1940 and the star of today

Tiến’s star was plumper than today’s. Báo Quân khu 7 gives its outer points on a circle a fifth of the flag’s length in radius and its inner corners on a circle a tenth of the length. Today’s star has the same outer circle, but its edges run in straight lines from point to point.

Telling it from China’s flag

China’s flag is also red with yellow stars, but it has five: a large star in the top corner by the pole and four smaller ones in an arc beside it, all in the canton, SNL describes. Vietnam’s single star is in the middle.

The yellow flag with three red stripes

The yellow flag with three horizontal red stripes is not Vietnam’s national flag today. SNL records it as the flag introduced in 1948 by the provisional government under the former emperor Bảo Đại, used by the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from 1955 to 1975. Many Vietnamese living abroad use it, SNL adds, and many US states have recognised it as the Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag.