Singapore’s national flag has five five-pointed stars.
The stars appear in a white pentagon beside a white crescent in the flag’s upper-left canton. They are arranged in a ring, making the group easy to distinguish from the single stars used on several other national flags. The flag itself is a horizontal red-and-white bicolour, with red above white.
Singapore adopted the design on 3 December 1959, when it became self-governing within the British Empire. The same flag remained in use when Singapore became independent from Malaysia on 9 August 1965. A committee led by deputy prime minister Toh Chin Chye developed the design.
The five stars symbolize Singapore’s national ideals: democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality. The crescent represents a young nation on the ascendant, while red stands for universal fellowship and equality and white for purity and virtue. People sometimes confuse the five stars with the flag of China, which has five stars too, but Singapore’s stars form a white pentagon beside a crescent.