Proposals for Taiwanese flag

[quote=“Dirt”]
That looks like a Florida design to me.[/quote]

if you are talking about Florida’s state flag, then yes, the diagonal red cross, also known as the Cross of Burgundy is the flag of Spain from 1506 to 1843. Although it was only introduced to Spain by the House of Habsburg, Cross of Burgundy became a Spanish symbol during the height of colonialism expansion and as such used to represent various Spanish territories, such as Florida.


news.ltn.com.tw/news/politics/br … ws/1616874

Yup, that’s a nice looking flag. It seems like “we need a new flag” consensus is forming. Although I thought you’d have a problem with this flag, since you’ve argued against the blue & green color combination.

It’s essentially the Red Peak flag, a.k.a. the Fifth flag, from New Zealand’s first round referendum, plus the Japanese “Tai” prefecture symbol, with a blue-green palette.

As a Red Peak lover myself, I only have an issue with the “Tai” prefecture symbol. Not only is it a symbol for Japanese colonization, putting it on the national flag also says something about putting Hanji and Sinitic languages before other native languages/scripts on the island. It’d be better to simply have an rhombus there, to symbolize Taiwan’s indigenous cultures.

by the way, I re-drew that flag based on some assumptions. 1. I assumed the “Tai-ji” is at the center of the flag, because that seem to be the case. 2. I assumed that flag used the most common 2:3 ratio, which I think isn’t the proportion Mr. Chen used (he probably used the 1:2 ratio). 3. I assumed the colors of the original design, adjusting for the mock flag’s slight transparent effect. This is what I got:


Maybe it’s just my poor color guessing, but the flag doesn’t look as good without the transparent fabric effect.

I also made a version replacing the symbol for Japanese prefecture with a simple rhombus design.

if only I can make this flag look as real as the original mock flag…

Is “cheap knock-off” (of Red Peak) really the message Taiwan wants to send the world?

since the New Zealanders are throwing it out, recycling is good for the environment…

anyway, my last design was inspired by Red Peak as well.

net3d_formosan_flag_tricolor_rhombus

ROC Constitution, ch. 1, article 6:

For all these years, people have assumed that the “white sun” should look like the KMT symbol–i.e. with 12 white triangles surrounding a white disk, leaving a blue circle in the negative space. But according to the text of the constitution, ANY white sun would be okay. A smiley sun, for example. Or…

…isn’t the circular design on those Lanyu (Orchid Island) canoes supposed to represent a sun?

google.com.tw/search?q=lany … AbsQsAQIGQ

Sure, they’re not EXCLUSIVELY white, but that’s just nit-picking, and the colors would blend in well with the existing flag, if the design were to replace the KMT emblem in the canton. What say ye?

PS. The text does not actually specify that the “blue sky” in the corner should take the form of a square canton. It could be a circle, or a diagonal, or…whatever you want, really, and still technically qualify as an ROC flag.

not exactly, it’s a depiction of the ancestor’s eyes, called mata.

but I tried that one back when I first created this thread.

It’s worth noting that the ROC canton is a direct rip off of the British Red Ensign, which was the flag for the Royal Navy, and later the flag for the British Merchant Navy. SYS’ spent a great portion of his youth in Hong Kong, which probably is where he picked up the design without understanding what the canton stood for. In anycase, the flag is pretty poorly conceived.

True, but it’s best for Taiwan to do away with that constitution all together.

New Zealanders have voted to keep the flag in the phase 2 referendum.

bbc.com/news/world-asia-35888474

56.61% of the people decided to go with the original flag instead of the phase 1 winner with a black, blue silver fern design.

stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/ass … referendum

An op-ed pointed out that due to how the referendum is designed, there is no definitively result for whether or not the people are for or against a flag change. The columnist said someone should be responsible for this, and I guess by that he meant John Key.

Regardless the columnist is certain there will be other flag referendums in the future and by then they will do it right. He writes:

Yeah, we can assume that some unknown proportion of NZ voters would like a new flag, but didn’t like any of the designs on offer. But at least we got Laser Kiwi out of it–they should totally use that (not as the national flag, but as something).

Thus spake Wikipedia:

A footnote leads to the following article: culture.teldap.tw/culture/index. … Itemid=210 (But this gives no additional information.)

Your image needs the canton to be adjusted. And… I wonder if the design would blend in better if it were outlined in blue instead of black? And do the number of points mean anything? (Nothing in the ROC Constitution specifies 12. For ideosyncratic reasons I would like to see 9.)

BTW note that nothing in the ROC Constitution specifies that the flag must be rectangular!

[quote=“Zla’od”]Yeah, we can assume that some unknown proportion of NZ voters would like a new flag, but didn’t like any of the designs on offer. But at least we got Laser Kiwi out of it–they should totally use that (not as the national flag, but as something).

Thus spake Wikipedia:

A footnote leads to the following article: culture.teldap.tw/culture/index. … Itemid=210 (But this gives no additional information.)

Your image needs the canton to be adjusted. And… I wonder if the design would blend in better if it were outlined in blue instead of black? And do the number of points mean anything? (Nothing in the ROC Constitution specifies 12. For ideosyncratic reasons I would like to see 9.)

BTW note that nothing in the ROC Constitution specifies that the flag must be rectangular![/quote]

Ok you have a point. But I think you only highlighted a even bigger problem. And this is rather obvious. Let me explain.

The roc is not even using that flag in international events such as sports and its representative offices in Japan and Korea.

Therefore that flag is more of a self-imposed restriction on the people of Taiwan, for political purposes, than anything else. Remember, when facing the Chinese, the roc doesn’t really use that flag, and doesn’t mind not using it either.

If Taiwan - one way or another - decides to use any other flag, it is not against the ROC constitution either. No amendment to the roc is necessary, is required, to use any other flag.

Good point, Sofun. A lot of the flag debate is amusing given that Taiwan can’t use the ROC flag in most spaces off Taiwan anyways! Makes you wonder, if Taiwan simply adopted the Olympic flag as its official flag, what would the Chinese and other internatiainal reaction be?

International reaction would be full of praise. Doug Paal and Richard Bush would describe it as provocative nevertheless, because it is still an unilateral action. Chinese reaction would be full of regret, for basically the same reason I explained previously.

Personally I don’t mind adopting the Olympic flag, but I wouldn’t stop at that either. I wouldn’t adopt the new flag out of the blue either.

I’d do it as a punishment against Chinese action. For example, every diplomatic tie-breaking conducted by China against the roc, I would double down with another removal of roc symbolism. Also for example, anytime China punishes any china-friendly Taiwanese business, I’d double down with punishing yet another China-friendly business which would have benefited the most from the first punishment that came from China. This is to neutralize China’s punishment, and it is a double whammy that reduces China’s influence twofold. Again, it’s a fairly simple concept.

Most people, including many American China watchers, don’t realize (but they should) that when China uses punishment, China looses influence. Because the logic of the original argument is that when you give incentives, you gain influence. You can’t have it both ways.

I like the tit-for-tat idea. As for the mata flag, while it isn’t the ideal Taiwan flag design, and wouldn’t solve all of Taiwan’s diplomatic problems, it would at least be a nice temporary improvement. And the great thing about it is that it wouldn’t require any change to current ROC law to be official. It is, after all, merely an alternative way of executing the design instructions specified in Article 1, Par. 6 of the ROC Constitution. It could be adopted informally, by whoever wanted to do so, and be just as legal as the version of the flag we’re all familiar with.

For the sake of comparison, consider what happened a few years ago when someone finally realized that technically, the ROC emblem was slightly different from the KMT emblem. (The KMT one has the sun “rays” extend to the edge of the blue circle, while the ROC one has a slightly larger blue circle.)

Edit: Mea culpa. Although the description in the ROC Constitution is indeed that simple, there apparently exists a subsidiary law covering flag construction with more specificity. So what I should have said was that while the mata flag could be adopted without changing the constitution, it would still require a change of law.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_t … c_of_China

culture.teldap.tw/culture/index. … ent&id=225

[quote=“Zla’od”]I like the tit-for-tat idea. As for the mata flag, while it isn’t the ideal Taiwan flag design, and wouldn’t solve all of Taiwan’s diplomatic problems, it would at least be a nice temporary improvement. And the great thing about it is that [b]it wouldn’t require any change to current ROC law to be official. …

Edit: Mea culpa. Although the description in the ROC Constitution is indeed that simple, there apparently exists a subsidiary law covering flag construction with more specificity. So what I should have said was that while the mata flag could be adopted without changing the constitution, it would still require a change of law.
[/quote]
The roc flag and a new Taiwan flag can be two different flags, just like the roc flag and the Chinese Taipei flag are two different flags. One does not necessarily have to replace another. All is needed is a hierarchical order clarifying the relations among these flags and what institutions these flags represent respectively.

yes, but compares to amending the constitution under current restrictions, changing that flag construction law would be a piece of cake if the DPP and the NPP wishes to change it.

So, who wants to e-mail Freddy Lim? (I doubt that Tsai would be interested in doing something so provocative right off the bat.)

An interesting historical detail is that back in the 1890’s, the white sun symbol was originally criticized as being too Japanese! I don’t suppose China would buy that as a reason for getting rid of it now…? :slight_smile:

I would still prefer a one shot remedy instead of pulling a temporary stopgap measure. The more times you try, the more resistance you get I think. Better to do it right when everyone is willing to be on your side, which leads us to how to design the referendum questions right the first time.

The referendum needs to let the people know what choices they have, and at the same time find out if they want a flag change regardless of the choices offered to them. I have two proposals.

Proposal A:

Phase 1 Referendum: Do you want the current flag changed?
Phase 2 Referendum: Preferential Voting of the short list candidates and a separate “none of the above” option. A voter’s short list candidate preferences is nullified if the separate none of the above option is chosen.

If the majority of the voters passed the phase 1 referendum but chose none of the above option in phase 2, then phase 2 will be repeated at every major election until people finds a flag they like.

Proposal B:

Phase 1 Referendum: Preferential Voting of the short list candidates
Phase 1 Referendum: Two referendum questions, 1st, choose between the current flag and the winner of phase 1. 2nd, do you want current flag changed?

If the flag from phase 1 has the majority, it becomes the new national flag. If the old flag has the majority, but the majority also wants to replace the old flag with something else, then the entire referendum will be repeated at every major election until people finds a flag they like.

The difference between the 2 is that in Proposal B, people would know which flag would replace the current flag when they decide if they want the old flag replaced. However, when a new flag isn’t chosen the first time, proposal A only needs to repeat the phase 2 referendum.

[quote=“hansioux”]…
Proposal A:

[/quote]
Ok these are all predicated on the scenario where the exact word “TAIWAN” has already been codified as a legal entity (polity) by law in Taiwan, correct?

No. However, if the referendum is to take place under the current framework, it would mean legislature has gotten it together and amended both the constitution and the referendum act.