North China

According to "Where the east is red" by Aldo Ziggiotto which appears in Crux Australis No. 58 Apr-Jun 2000, when the government in Peking first assigned a flag to its navy, in August 1912, Yuan Shi-k'ai had not yet begun his rapid career as an autocratic reactionary, and in fact, a canton placed on the national flag, consisting of a eight pointed white star on a blue field,seemed an obvious, if approximate, reference to the emblem of the southern government of the Kuomintang (KMT). This flag lasted until December. By then Yuan had fallen out with the KMT, which declared him an outlaw. In the north where the government in Peking was beholden to foreign powers, a flag appeared that was to last until 1928. It featured the five-banded national flag in the canton with a blue cross throughout, in the manner of the British white ensign that it seemed so closely to emulate.
Nozomi Kariyasu, 20 March 2005