Flag flub could have been avoided, if Mao had been given his way at country’s birth
Late leader preferred a simpler design with only one star
Here’s a fun fact about the furore over the faulty national flags raised at the Rio Olympics Games: Had late leader Mao Zedong insisted on adopting his preferred design for the flag, the mistake with the wrongly aligned stars would not have occurred.
The five-star red flag, designed by Shanghai resident Zeng Liansong, almost did not make it into the pool of finalists for the national flag and certainly was not Mao’s first choice.
Following the Communist Party’s victory in the civil war, a preparatory committee of the New Political Consultative Conference decided to call for nation-wide design submissions for a new national flag, in preparation for the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Some 3,000 drafts were received in a month’s time. These included a design with a large yellow star in the upper left corner, above a yellow horizontal stripe on a red background. It was preferred by many people, including Mao.
The star was meant to represent the party’s leadership, while the stripe stood for the Yellow River, known as the cradle of Chinese civilization.
