"Paul Schauble" <Paul.Schauble@ticketmaster.com> writes:
what's wrong with calling the tz zone Asia/China
That would be an inaccurate name, since the zone in question does not include Heilongjiang, Gansu, Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan, and lots of other parts of modern-day China. And it would be an unwise name choice even if it were accurate today, since it's possible that China will split into multiple time zones in the not-so-distant future. As for James Su's question as to why we don't use the name 'Asia/Chongqing': we do. That is, we already have another zone by that name. The clocks in Chongqing and Shanghai have not always agreed since 1970, so the two locations use different zones. We have those two zones for the same reason we have two zones for New York and Indianapolis.
I agree with the drawbacks of using the most populated city as a proxy for a time zone.
The current scheme has drawbacks, yes. But long ago we tried the approach you're suggesting. That is, we based the name on some more-political entity than a city name. For example, we used "W-SU" for the western Soviet Union and "GB-Eire" for the British Isles. Unfortunately this approach also has problems, and that is why we switched.