Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4923787-20130127005832/@comment-32656-20130221053642

The Manchurian government was Japanese in all but name. Worked good for a puppet.

No idea why the Beiyang government did it. All I can say about it is that it wasn't popular, and was hated. Far as I can guess, Yuan Shikai may have liked it and made it happen.

Something else about that flag - it to many Chinese indicates a hierarchy. Look at the order of stripes. It goes against almost all the reasons why the empire fell, really.