TAIWAN, FLAG OF

national flag consisting of a red field (background) with a blue canton incorporating a white sun. The width-to-length ratio of the flag is 2 to 3. The first Chinese republic lasted from 1911 until 1928. Its national flag consisted of five equal horizontal stripes of red, yellow, blue, white, and black, symbolizing the principal ethnic groups of the nation. Following the death of the country's original leader, Sun Yat-sen, a new regime was established under the military and political leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. Consequently, a new national flag was adopted on October 28, 1928, to reflect this change. The new flag, which had been the naval war ensign since 1914, had a background of red with a blue canton bearing a white stylized sun. The three colours stood for the Three Principles of the People of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang)nationalism, democracy, and socialism. The leadership of the Kuomintang in national development was emphasized by the use of its party flag (a white sun on a blue field) as the canton for the national flag. The red colour was the traditional ethnic symbol of the Han, or Chinese, majority population. The Kuomintang party flag had originally been created in 1895 by Lu Hao-tung, a revolutionary then living in exile. The flag of the Republic of China, now flown only on the island of Taiwan, was not the first national flag to be based on a modified party flag: the earliest known examples are the red-and-white striped flag of the Sons of Liberty in the North American colonies and the blue-white-red ribbons worn by patriots in France. Whitney Smith History Taiwan was known to the Chinese as early as the 3rd century AD, but settlement by the Chinese was not significant until the first quarter of the 17th century after recurrent famines in Fukien Province encouraged emigration of Fukienese from the mainland. Before then the island was a base of operations for Chinese and Japanese pirates. The Portuguese, who first visited the island in 1590 and named it Ilha Formosa (Beautiful Island), made several unsuccessful attempts at settlement. The Dutch and Spaniards established more lasting settlements, the Dutch at An-p'ing in southwestern Taiwan in 1624, the Spaniards in 1626 at Chi-lung in the north. Until 1646, when the Dutch seized the Spanish settlements, northern Taiwan was under Spanish domination, the south under Dutch control. The Dutch were expelled in 1661 by Cheng Ch'eng-kung, a man of mixed Chinese-Japanese parentage and a supporter of the defeated Ming emperors, who used the island as a centre of opposition to the Ch'ing (Manchu) regime. Imperial Chinese rule In 1683, 20 years after Cheng Ch'eng-kung's death, the island fell to the Ch'ing and became part of Fukien Province. Meanwhile, sizable migrations of refugees, Ming supporters, had increased the population to about 200,000. As migrants streamed in from southeastern China, large areas in the north were settled. T'ai-nan (then called T'ai-wan) was the capital. By 1842 the population was estimated at 2,500,000, and both rice and sugar had become important exports to mainland China. In 1858 the Treaty of T'ien-ching (Tientsin) designated two Taiwan ports as treaty ports, T'ai-nan and Tan-shui, the latter a river port, long used as a port of call under the Spanish and Dutch, and downstream from the growing city of Taipei. Tea became an important export crop, and the island's trade centre shifted to the north, particularly to Tan-shui, where British trading companies established their headquarters. Japan's continued interest in the island was reflected in a Japanese punitive expedition of 1874 ostensibly to protect the lives of Ryukyu fishermen along the island's coasts. The French blockaded the island during the undeclared Sino-French war of 188485 and occupied Chi-lung for a short period. In 1886 Taiwan became a separate province of China with a legal capital at T'ai-chung and a temporary capital at Taipei, which became the legal capital in 1894.