Flag of Taiwan (Republic of China)

How to read it

The Republic of China governs Taiwan; in October 2026 its Ministry of Foreign Affairs listed twelve states with which it has diplomatic relations, eleven of them UN members and the twelfth the Holy See. Article 6 of the Constitution of the Republic of China says the national flag is a red field with a blue sky and a white sun in the upper left corner. The National Emblem and National Flag of the Republic of China Act, last amended on 23 October 1954, fixes the rest. The flag is three by two, and the blue canton is a quarter of it. In the canton is the white sun of the national emblem, centred where the canton’s centre lines cross, with a radius one eighth of the canton’s length. Its twelve rays reach out to twice that radius from the centre, each a point of 30 degrees, with the rays at top, bottom and sides pointing straight up, down and out; a blue ring a fifteenth of the sun’s diameter wide separates the sun from the rays. The act makes the flagpole white with a round gold top, and has the flag flown outdoors from sunrise to sunset.

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Blue sky, white sun, and a wholly red earth

The flag’s Chinese name is a description of it: 青天白日滿地紅, “blue sky, white sun, and a wholly red earth”. It is the last line of the National Flag Anthem, words by Tai Chuan-hsien and music by Huang Tzu, which the Office of the President publishes with the flag. The office gives a second reading of the colours: blue for brightness, purity and freedom, a government of the people; white for honesty, selflessness and equality, a government by the people; and crimson for sacrifice, bloodshed and brotherly love, a government for the people.

How the flag came about

Lu Hao-tung designed the white sun in a blue sky and presented it in Hong Kong on 21 February 1895, the Office of the President says; the red field was added in the years before the revolution of 1911. The provisional government first took a flag of five colours, red, yellow, blue, white and black, as the national flag, gave the army a flag of 18 yellow stars and the navy the white sun in a blue sky. The office dates the present flag’s official adoption to 5 May 1921; the act that now governs it was first passed in 1928, the Taipei Times notes.

The national emblem and the KMT emblem

The white sun in the canton is the national emblem, and it is often confused with the emblem of the Kuomintang (KMT). Both are a white sun on blue, but in the KMT’s the sun is larger and its twelve rays touch the edge of the blue circle, the Taipei Times explains; in the national emblem a blue ring separates the sun from its rays, and the rays stop short of the edge. The national emblem is on military uniforms, government documents, the passport and the flag of Taiwan’s Olympic teams.