I know this is a controversial topic, but I've been asked to submit this, and have decided to do so for a few reasons: * We'll stop getting questions of why Beijing Time is not included. * People that want to ship their own modified version of tzdata can take this patch. * The common proposed fix is that we should be using "human presentable" names and have a mapping from these names to the actual timezones. Since that proposal, indeed since the inception of desktop Linux/Unix, no one (as far as I know) has actually done this, leading to continued confusion from users. * I've seen it argued that we have to keep the the database pristine, yet the bar for entry does not actually seem that high. For example, we have a link from the Vatican to Rome, even though it should be pretty obvious that they're the same time zone. And we have a Link for people that can't seem to figure out if Nicosia is in Europe or Asia. * This really does seem to confuse users. "Eastern Time" includes both Washington, D.C. and New York City. The justification is that we never added Washington to the list, so we shouldn't add Beijing. But this is really not a fair comparison. It's called "Beijing Time". I'm sure if ET was called "Washington Time", it would at least give me pause to select New York time, even though I'm a New Yorker. No one gets confused that they have to pick New York, or Madrid instead of Barcelona, so that argument doesn't hold water.