2008 Summer Olympics National Flag Bearers

2008 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations was part of the opening ceremony that originating with the 1896 Olympic Games. The national team from each nation participating in the Olympic Games paraded behind their national flag into the Olympic Stadium. The flag bearer was an athlete of each national delegation chosen, to represent the athletes, either by the National Olympic Committee or by the national team.

Announcers in the stadium read off the names of the marching nations in French, English, (the official languages of the Olympics) and Mandarin Chinese with music accompanying the athletes as they marched into the stadium.

The Marshall Islands, Montenegro, and Tuvalu debuted at these Games, and Serbia competed under its name for the first time after the 1912 Summer Olympics. Montenegro and Serbia were previously one country as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.

Parade order

Per tradition, Greece entered first as the spiritual home of the Olympic Games, and the host country, China, entered last. All nations in between marched in the order of their names in Chinese, the host country's language.

As Chinese does not have an alphabetical order, the National Olympic Committees were sorted based on stroke count in Simplified Chinese characters. Specifically:
* Characters with fewer strokes march earlier, so Australia () marched before Zambia () because has 15 strokes and has 16 strokes.
* If the initial characters have the same number of strokes, then the stroke orders of the two characters are grouped in the order 橫竖撇捺折 (horizontal/vertical/left falling/right falling/fold). For example, Yemen () marched before Maldives () because has three strokes in the order (525), while has three strokes in the order (551).
** Multiple Chinese sources reported that if the initial characters had the same number of strokes, the second characters would be used. However, this is inaccurate as Chad (, stroke count 5-11) marched before Ghana (, stroke count 5-7) because (stroke order (31211)) is ordered in front of (stroke order (53251)).
* If the stroke order groups are still the same, the initial characters tie and the second characters of each nation are used.
** Excluding identical characters, a tie only occurred once, with The Gambia () and Benin (). has four strokes in the order (2534), and has four strokes in the order (2534), so the second characters were used. has 4 strokes and has 5 strokes, so The Gambia marched before Benin.
** Note that this differs from GB stroke-based order, which also uses the 橫竖撇捺折 system. Under GB stroke-based order, the comparison between ㇆ and ㇕ would have been the tiebreaker, with ㇕ ordering before ㇆ due to having fewer turns. This would have caused 贝 to be ordered before 冈 instead of the two characters tying, and Benin would have marched before The Gambia.
* If the second characters still have the same number of strokes, then the stroke order groups are used again. For example, Djibouti () marched before Kyrgyzstan () because has five strokes in the order (13252), while has five strokes in the order (35234).
* If the third characters still have the same number of strokes, the stroke order groups are ''not'' used and it skips to the fourth character. Excluding identical characters, this only occurred once: the US Virgin Islands () marched before American Samoa (), since and both have 11 strokes, ㇜ (5) sorting behind ㇐ (1) is ignored, and (5 strokes) sorts in front of (15 strokes).
** This did not occur during the 2022 Winter Olympics, with stroke order groups used throughout and American Samoa marched in front of the US Virgin Islands.

Two nations were ordered based on a different name:
* Macedonia marched under its then-provisional designation "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (), but was sorted under "Macedonia" ( ''Mǎqídùn'').
* The United Arab Emirates marched under its short name in Chinese ( ''Āliánqiú''), but was sorted under its full name ( ''Ālābó Liánhé Qiúzhǎngguó'').

Three nations marched out of order:
* During the 2000, 2004, and 2006 Olympics, South Korea () and North Korea () had marched as one team under the Korean Unification Flag. However, during these 2008 Olympics, negotiations failed for political reasons. Despite this, by coincidence in Simplified Chinese, the sort order would have placed North Korea immediately after South Korea, since and both have 12 strokes starting with (1225) which no other 12-stroke country starts with. The organizing team left this as-is, but North Korea refused to march next to South Korea and successfully requested to be moved three teams later in the parade order. South Korea marched under its short name "Korea" in French and English.
* Under the original sort order, Israel () ( (5434)) would have marched immediately after Palestine () ( (5215)), but instead marched 22 teams earlier, apparently under the fiction ( (2434)) between Vanuatu () ( (1554)) and Japan () ( (2511)).
** During the 2022 Winter Olympics in which Palestine did not compete, this did not occur and Israel marched ''after'' Pakistan (), which starts with the same character as Palestine.
* For unknown reasons, Tonga () marched ''after'' Andorra () and other nations beginning with , even though ( (441533)) sorts in front of ( (445531)). By comparison, Zimbabwe () marched in front of Tunisia () as expected, under the same circumstances ( and both have 9 strokes and begin with a comparison between (441) and (445)).
* Multiple sources reported that Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) () and the Central African Republic () had switched places to prevent Taiwan from marching next to Hong Kong (), but this is inaccurate as ( (21112111)) is naturally ordered before ( (25112141)). Taiwan had originally requested to march under ''Tái''.
** '' Zaobao'' reported that a contingency plan had been set up so that if Central African Republic athletes did not arrive at the opening ceremony, a BOCOG volunteer would still hold the country's placard and march between Taiwan and Hong Kong. However, this is not unusual (for example, the same occurred during the 2016 Summer Olympics parade when athletes from Eritrea did not arrive until after the opening ceremony).

Brunei was excluded from the Games by the IOC shortly before the Opening Ceremony as no athletes had been registered. One of the published lists of flag bearers was later edited to note this. Brunei athletes would have originally marched 36th between Uzbekistan and Barbados.

List

The following is a list of each country's flag bearer. The list is sorted by the sequence that each nation appeared in the parade of nations. The names are given in their official designations by the IOC, and the Chinese names follow their official designations by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.

;Notes:

See also

* 2004 Summer Olympics national flag bearers
* 2008 Summer Paralympics national flag bearers
* 2010 Winter Olympics national flag bearers
* 2022 Winter Olympics national flag bearers

References

Main reference:

{{Portal bar, Lists, China, Olympic Games

Flag bearers
Lists of Olympic flag bearers
Parades in China