China Republic war flag

A red flag with a black nine-pointed star and yellow disks was used during the conquest of Wuhan on 10 October 1911. It was later considered a "historical" flag and was used as the war flag by the army. It was never used for civil purposes.
Mario Fabretto, 20 October 1997

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Officially the 18-star flag ("War Flag") was designed in late September 1911 by Chen Lei and the Zhao brothers, three technical college students in Wuhan at the time. Twenty flags of this design were then made in secret by a local tailor shop owned by the Zhao family (whether this Zhao family was related to the Zhao brothers is not clear).

The 18 stars represented the 18 provinces of China at the time.
Miles Li, 16, 18 March, 2005

The Provisional Republican Government was set up on 10 October 1911 by Sun Yatsen and Li Yuanhong, a military commander in Wuchang (today is Wuchang a quarter of Wuhan).

I visited the "Former Headquarter of the Wuchang Uprising" in 2003. In front of the brick building are two war flags at the gate. The stars are looking not so thin, like on Rob Raeside's image (I will post a photo tomorrow).

A small original flag is shown inside. It looks like the war flag with two faded yellow (?, now dirty white) stripes above and below. Inscription says, that this is the army flag of the Wuchang uprising, created by Sun Wu.

More information about the war flag can be found at sun.yatsen.gov.tw in Chinese. There is one more other variant of the flag (dated 1906?).
J. Patrick Fischer, 30 November 2005