2022 Winter Paralympics Parade of Nations
During the Parade of Nations within the Beijing 2022 Winter Paralympics opening ceremony on March 4, athletes and officials from each participating country marched in the Beijing National Stadium, preceded by their flag and placard bearer bearing the respective country's name. Each flag bearer was chosen either by the nation's National Paralympic Committee or by the team of athletes themselves.
== Parade order ==
Nations marched in the order of the host language, Simplified Chinese. China entered last as host, and Italy entered second-to-last as upcoming host.
As Chinese characters do not have an alphabetical order, they were sorted based on stroke count. Specifically:Characters with fewer strokes march earlier, so New Zealand (新西兰) marched before Mexico (墨西哥) because 新 has 13 strokes and 墨 has 15 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, Denmark (丹麦) marched before Brazil (巴西) because 丹 has four strokes in the order ㇓㇆㇔㇐ (3541), while 巴 has four strokes in the order ㇕丨㇐㇟ (5215).
The second characters are not compared, even though 麦 has more strokes than 西.
While it is possible to have a pair of characters with the same stroke count and the same stroke order groups, this did not occur during the parade. If the initial characters are identical, the second characters of each nation are used, and so on.
== Countries and flag bearers ==
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 IPC, and the Chinese names follow their official designations by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.