China time zones 1949 - 1980: appeal to speakers of Mandarin
tz database holds that People's Republic of China maintained 5 different time zones between the foundation of the PRC in 1949 and May 1980, when the uniform Beijing timezone (GMT + 8h) was introduced. Various sources claim that this unified country-wide timezone was already introduced in 1949 or early 1950: Several TZ mailing list entries, e.g. 10/16/2010 by Jonathan.Hassid@uts.edu.au who writes: "The government in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province) announced the switch (from "Shulong" (Gansu/Sichuan) time) to Beijing time on 27 Dec. 1949. The rest of the country followed "in early 1950" (dates unspecified), and as I mentioned in my last email, "by the beginning of 1950, within a few months after establishing the country, the entire country except for Xinjiang and Tibet was all using the Beijing Time standard." Paul Eckert tried to get an answer from historian Thomas S Mullaney in a correspondence in February 2008, but the question whether China introduced the unified timezone in 1949 or 1980 remained unanswered by Mullaney (he is currently on leave from Stanford and cannot be contacted). The Wikipedia articles 'Time in China' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China and 'Historical time zones of China' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_time_zones_of_China hold that the unified timezone was introduced in 1949. They say: "These time zones were no longer in effective use after 1949, in the Chinese Civil War when the People's Republic of China was established on mainland China. The People's Republic of China uses a single time zone (GMT+8) for the whole country," and "After the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the People's Republic of China established one single time zone (UTC+8) for the entirety of its claimed territories, " I could not identify the source reference for this claim by the Wikipedia authors. I tried to contact one of them, User:Alanmak by various means without success. He seemed to me the main contributor regarding China TZ history. This seems to be a relevant source: Guo, Qingsheng (2003) "Beijing Time at the Beginning of PRC", China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 24(1) It is an article in Chinese (it can be purchased online), and I do not know a translator whom I would trust with translation of such technical or historical detail. It seems to me that the only source claiming the continuation of 5 time zones for China is the International Atlas by Shanks and Pottenger. The overall work of these authors is extremely valuable, but they do not give a source for their China information. Paul Eckert says in tz/asia file: # From Paul Eggert (2008-06-30): # There seems to be a good chance China switched to a single time zone in 1949 # rather than in 1980 as Shanks & Pottenger have it, but we don't have a # reliable documentary source saying so yet, so for now we still go with # Shanks & Pottenger. I agree with Paul's opinion and decision, but find it not acceptable to remain at this degree of uncertainty or such a large area, long time period of 31 years and such a large population of hundreds of millions of people: We do NOT reliably know which timezone there was in January 1980 in large cities like Chengdu or Chongqing. I appeal to those readers of the mailing list capable of reading Chinese / mandarin to look for sources which could - document that multiple timezones where indeed maintained before May 1980 (e.g. railway or airline time tables of that period), - document the transition to a unified zone in May 1980 (legal text, newspaper articles mentioning the time change) - document the government decision for a unified timezone in 1949 My gut feeling is that the unified timezone was introduced in 1949, and that Shanks got it wrong. We need documents to establish that.
On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 10:10 PM, Alois Treindl <alois@astro.ch> wrote:
I appeal to those readers of the mailing list capable of reading Chinese / mandarin to look for sources which could - document that multiple timezones where indeed maintained before May 1980 (e.g. railway or airline time tables of that period), - document the transition to a unified zone in May 1980 (legal text, newspaper articles mentioning the time change) - document the government decision for a unified timezone in 1949
My gut feeling is that the unified timezone was introduced in 1949, and that Shanks got it wrong. We need documents to establish that.
I refer to: http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/caac56/<http://bit.ly/1nMKS46>, which has clean scans of the Civil Aviation Administration of China's 1956 timetable. As far as I can make out from calculating flight times, all places in China that CAAC flew to had the same timezone. -- Sanjeev Gupta +65 98551208 http://www.linkedin.com/in/ghane
On 12 March 2014 18:39, Sanjeev Gupta <ghane0@gmail.com> wrote:
I refer to: http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/caac56/ , which has clean scans of the Civil Aviation Administration of China's 1956 timetable. As far as I can make out from calculating flight times, all places in China that CAAC flew to had the same timezone.
No need to calculate flight times; the first page http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/caac56/caac56-1.jpg says that all times are given in Peking Standard Time (including times in places such as Moscow or Pyongyang). Since Peking Standard Time obviously does not apply to Moscow or Pyongyang, it's not necessarily valid to deduce from that timetable's use of it that it applied to (say) Kashgar, Lhasa, or Kunming as well. However, the fact that a conversion table is given for timezones for non-Chinese cities but not for Chinese ones does imply that no timezone conversion was deemed necessary for them. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>
Thank you, this is an excellent website with valuable resources. It also holds complete flight tables for 1963. The 1956 document says 'all flight times in Peking time'. The 1963 tables say 'flight times in local time'. By comparing routes in both directions one can deduce that no timezones are crossed within China. The duration of flights between pairs of cities inside China is the same in both directions. This seems to establish that in 1956 and in 1963 there was a unified timezone in China, i.e. Beijing time. I hope that we can collect more supportive evidence, and details about the introduction date of Beijing time in the the various parts of the country soon after the foundation of the People's Republic. It is already evident that the TZ database will need an update. I hope TZ will keep the various zones, as they describe important differences before 1949, when time zones existed. It would be sad to loose this information only because after 1970 the country appears under a single zone. On 12.03.14 18:39, Sanjeev Gupta wrote:
I refer to: http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/caac56/ <http://bit.ly/1nMKS46> , which has clean scans of the Civil Aviation Administration of China's 1956 timetable. As far as I can make out from calculating flight times, all places in China that CAAC flew to had the same timezone.
On 03/12/2014 07:10 AM, Alois Treindl wrote:
Guo, Qingsheng (2003) "Beijing Time at the Beginning of PRC", China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 24(1)
It is an article in Chinese (it can be purchased online), and I do not know a translator whom I would trust with translation of such technical or historical detail.
I'll try to dig up a copy.
Alois Treindl <alois <at> astro.ch> writes:
This seems to be a relevant source: Guo, Qingsheng (2003) "Beijing Time at the Beginning of PRC", China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 24(1)
Hi Alois and Paul, I purchased the journal article (finally after days of figuring out which service allows payment from outside China). From the points Alois raised in his recent email, I try to clarify by using that article, quoting/paraphrasing its English translation.
Various sources claim that this unified country-wide timezone was already introduced in 1949 or early 1950
This particular source says the first meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference passed the resolution of "making Beiping the capital, changing Beiping to Beijing." That was 27 September 1949. On the same day, Beiping Xinhua Radio was renamed with Beijing at the beginning. The next day, that station started using Beijing in its timekeeping call. The earliest written instance of "Beijing Time" found by the author was on 7 October 1949, through a newspaper posting from Xi'an People's Radio. That said, the author inferred that Beijing Time was established on 27 September 1949.
It seems to me that the only source claiming the continuation of 5 time zones for China is the International Atlas by Shanks and Pottenger. The overall work of these authors is extremely valuable, but they do not give a source for their China information.
Paul Eckert says in tz/asia file: # From Paul Eggert (2008-06-30): # There seems to be a good chance China switched to a single time zone in 1949 # rather than in 1980 as Shanks & Pottenger have it, but we don't have a # reliable documentary source saying so yet, so for now we still go with # Shanks & Pottenger.
For time zones in the rest of China after that, Qing-sheng Guo has another journal article in 2001 that discussed these in detail, entitled "A Study on the Standard Time Changes for the Past 100 Years in China," from China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 22(3). Earlier I mentioned Xi'an radio station referencing Beijing Time. Another written source for this was from the Xi'an People's Government dated 2 November 1949, announcing to stop using Longshu Time (aka Kansu-Szechuan Time, GMT+7) and change to Beijing Time from 3 November 1949 onwards.
10/16/2010 by Jonathan.Hassid <at> uts.edu.au who writes: "The government in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province) announced the switch (from "Shulong" (Gansu/Sichuan) time) to Beijing time on 27 Dec. 1949.
As for Chengdu, the date 27 December 1949 is stated in the article as "being liberated" during the Communist Revolution. The switch to Beijing Time "was announced ten days or so after that." The author referenced a notice from the Chengdu Garrison Command dated 6 January 1950, to request citizens to adjust their watches through daily sirens at noon Beijing Time. For most other parts of China, they "have used standard time of 120° longitude around the year 1950 to 1953." He dubbed it the "chaotic period", since no government agency announced and enforced this rule of time, instead the cities synced to the unified time at their pace. In the 2003 article, Guo obtained two independent sources that verified the Beijing Time of 1949 was using apparent/true solar time (GMT+7:56) and not mean solar time (7:46) or standard time of 120° longitude (8:00). However, he had doubts about that, since he thought apparent solar time is a step back to time measurements in the early 20th century, and standard time signals can be obtained easily from overseas stations at the time. The 1954 Chinese Astronomical Almanac mentioned that "except Xinjiang and Tibet, the whole country uses standard time of 120° longitude." He has yet to find out exactly when did Beijing Time switch back to GMT+8 between 1949 and 1954 in the article. I will try to look for later articles that reference this work. For Tibet, the standard time of 90° longitude was used prior to March 1959, also known as Lhasa Time. After the Tibetan Uprising that month and the Panchen Lama took over, the author surmised that the transition from Lhasa Time to Beijing Time happened at the second half of 1959. He tried to look for "first-hand accounts" on this, but found none so far. On the other hand, Guo said time zone changes for Xinjiang is relatively well documented. The Revolutionary Committee of Xinjiang and Xinjiang military notified on 9 June 1969, that starting from 1 July 1969, Beijing Time would be put into effect for the entire Xinjiang province. On 7 April 1975, the same committee put out a notice to be enforced on 1 May, that except military, rail-road, civil aviation, postal and telecommunication services, the schedules for government, factories, mines, businesses and schools would use Urumqi Time. Due to poor implementation of this notice, they again informed on 10 June 1977 that "schedules for work, meeting etc. should only use Urumqi Time for the whole province." In the end, the Xinjiang People's Government decided that starting 1 February 1986, the entire province would use Urumqi Time. Whenever Beijing Time is used, they should be stated explicitly. According to Guo, this particular rule is more effectively put into practice. The question for tz database is whether the switch to Urumqi Time in Xinjiang is on 1975 (when it was first announced) or 1986 (when it was more commonly implemented). To conclude, all of China currently is in the UTC+8:00 time zone except for Xinjiang province, according to the articles. The central Chinese government still did not made a law to enforce the unified time zone, although it was widely accepted that China has one official time zone. Whether or not the locals all around China follow that standard time, we do not know for sure. The 2001 article by Guo also has details about Chinese time zones from the 1900s to 1949. We can start a new thread on this if necessary.
Alois Treindl <alois <at> astro.ch> writes:
This seems to be a relevant source: Guo, Qingsheng (2003) "Beijing Time at the Beginning of PRC", China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 24(1)
Hi Alois and Paul, I purchased the journal article (finally after days of figuring out which service allows payment from outside China). From the points Alois raised in his recent email, I try to clarify by using that article, quoting/paraphrasing its English translation.
Various sources claim that this unified country-wide timezone was already introduced in 1949 or early 1950
This particular source says the first meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference passed the resolution of "making Beiping the capital, changing Beiping to Beijing." That was 27 September 1949. On the same day, Beiping Xinhua Radio was renamed with Beijing at the beginning. The next day, that station started using Beijing in its timekeeping call. The earliest written instance of "Beijing Time" found by the author was on 7 October 1949, through a newspaper posting from Xi'an People's Radio. That said, the author inferred that Beijing Time was established on 27 September 1949.
It seems to me that the only source claiming the continuation of 5 time zones for China is the International Atlas by Shanks and Pottenger. The overall work of these authors is extremely valuable, but they do not give a source for their China information.
Paul Eckert says in tz/asia file: # From Paul Eggert (2008-06-30): # There seems to be a good chance China switched to a single time zone in 1949 # rather than in 1980 as Shanks & Pottenger have it, but we don't have a # reliable documentary source saying so yet, so for now we still go with # Shanks & Pottenger.
For time zones in the rest of China after that, Qing-sheng Guo has another journal article in 2001 that discussed these in detail, entitled "A Study on the Standard Time Changes for the Past 100 Years in China," from China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 22(3). Earlier I mentioned Xi'an radio station referencing Beijing Time. Another written source for this was from the Xi'an People's Government dated 2 November 1949, announcing to stop using Longshu Time (aka Kansu-Szechuan Time, GMT+7) and change to Beijing Time from 3 November 1949 onwards.
10/16/2010 by Jonathan.Hassid <at> uts.edu.au who writes: "The government in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province) announced the switch (from "Shulong" (Gansu/Sichuan) time) to Beijing time on 27 Dec. 1949.
As for Chengdu, the date 27 December 1949 is stated in the article as "being liberated" during the Communist Revolution. The switch to Beijing Time "was announced ten days or so after that." The author referenced a notice from the Chengdu Garrison Command dated 6 January 1950, to request citizens to adjust their watches through daily sirens at noon Beijing Time. For most other parts of China, they "have used standard time of 120° longitude around the year 1950 to 1953." He dubbed it the "chaotic period", since no government agency announced and enforced this rule of time, instead the cities synced to the unified time at their pace. In the 2003 article, Guo obtained two independent sources that verified the Beijing Time of 1949 was using apparent/true solar time (GMT+7:56) and not mean solar time (7:46) or standard time of 120° longitude (8:00). However, he had doubts about that, since he thought apparent solar time is a step back to time measurements in the early 20th century, and standard time signals can be obtained easily from overseas stations at the time. The 1954 Chinese Astronomical Almanac mentioned that "except Xinjiang and Tibet, the whole country uses standard time of 120° longitude." He has yet to find out exactly when did Beijing Time switch back to GMT+8 between 1949 and 1954 in the article. I will try to look for later articles that reference this work. For Tibet, the standard time of 90° longitude was used prior to March 1959, also known as Lhasa Time. After the Tibetan Uprising that month and the Panchen Lama took over, the author surmised that the transition from Lhasa Time to Beijing Time happened at the second half of 1959. He tried to look for "first-hand accounts" on this, but found none so far. On the other hand, Guo said time zone changes for Xinjiang is relatively well documented. The Revolutionary Committee of Xinjiang and Xinjiang military notified on 9 June 1969, that starting from 1 July 1969, Beijing Time would be put into effect for the entire Xinjiang province. On 7 April 1975, the same committee put out a notice to be enforced on 1 May, that except military, rail-road, civil aviation, postal and telecommunication services, the schedules for government, factories, mines, businesses and schools would use Urumqi Time. Due to poor implementation of this notice, they again informed on 10 June 1977 that "schedules for work, meeting etc. should only use Urumqi Time for the whole province." In the end, the Xinjiang People's Government decided that starting 1 February 1986, the entire province would use Urumqi Time. Whenever Beijing Time is used, they should be stated explicitly. According to Guo, this particular rule is more effectively put into practice. The question for tz database is whether the switch to Urumqi Time in Xinjiang is on 1975 (when it was first announced) or 1986 (when it was more commonly implemented). To conclude, all of China currently is in the UTC+8:00 time zone except for Xinjiang province, according to the articles. The central Chinese government still did not made a law to enforce the unified time zone, although it was widely accepted that China has one official time zone. Whether or not the locals all around China follow that standard time, we do not know for sure. The 2001 article by Guo also has details about Chinese time zones from the 1900s to 1949. We can start a new thread on this if necessary.
I have interviewed numerous people of various nationalities and from different localities in Xinjiang and can confirm the information in Guo's report regarding Xinjiang, as well as the Time article reference by David Cochrane. Whether officially recognized or not (and both are officially recognized), two separate times have been in use in Xinjiang since at least the Cultural Revolution: Xinjiang Time (XJT), aka Urumqi Time or local time; and Beijing Time. There is no confusion in Xinjiang as to which name refers to which time. Both are widely used in the province, although in some population groups might be use one to the exclusion of the other. The only problem is that computers and smart phones list Urumqi (or Kashgar) as having the same time as Beijing. I don't know why this would be a very big problem to fix. Then users can choose to set their computers or cell phones to Beijing time if they want, or to Xinjiang time if they want (instead of choosing some other locality like Dacca, which works until they go on daylight time.) Please fix this, -Luther On Mar 24, 2014, at 2:26 PM, Gary How <hytar@outlook.com> wrote:
Alois Treindl <alois <at> astro.ch> writes:
This seems to be a relevant source: Guo, Qingsheng (2003) "Beijing Time at the Beginning of PRC", China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 24(1)
Hi Alois and Paul, I purchased the journal article (finally after days of figuring out which service allows payment from outside China). From the points Alois raised in his recent email, I try to clarify by using that article, quoting/paraphrasing its English translation.
Various sources claim that this unified country-wide timezone was already introduced in 1949 or early 1950
This particular source says the first meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference passed the resolution of "making Beiping the capital, changing Beiping to Beijing." That was 27 September 1949. On the same day, Beiping Xinhua Radio was renamed with Beijing at the beginning. The next day, that station started using Beijing in its timekeeping call. The earliest written instance of "Beijing Time" found by the author was on 7 October 1949, through a newspaper posting from Xi'an People's Radio. That said, the author inferred that Beijing Time was established on 27 September 1949.
It seems to me that the only source claiming the continuation of 5 time zones for China is the International Atlas by Shanks and Pottenger. The overall work of these authors is extremely valuable, but they do not give a source for their China information.
Paul Eckert says in tz/asia file: # From Paul Eggert (2008-06-30): # There seems to be a good chance China switched to a single time zone in 1949 # rather than in 1980 as Shanks & Pottenger have it, but we don't have a # reliable documentary source saying so yet, so for now we still go with # Shanks & Pottenger.
For time zones in the rest of China after that, Qing-sheng Guo has another journal article in 2001 that discussed these in detail, entitled "A Study on the Standard Time Changes for the Past 100 Years in China," from China Historical Materials of Science and Technology 22(3).
Earlier I mentioned Xi'an radio station referencing Beijing Time. Another written source for this was from the Xi'an People's Government dated 2 November 1949, announcing to stop using Longshu Time (aka Kansu-Szechuan Time, GMT+7) and change to Beijing Time from 3 November 1949 onwards.
10/16/2010 by Jonathan.Hassid <at> uts.edu.au who writes: "The government in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province) announced the switch (from "Shulong" (Gansu/Sichuan) time) to Beijing time on 27 Dec. 1949.
As for Chengdu, the date 27 December 1949 is stated in the article as "being liberated" during the Communist Revolution. The switch to Beijing Time "was announced ten days or so after that." The author referenced a notice from the Chengdu Garrison Command dated 6 January 1950, to request citizens to adjust their watches through daily sirens at noon Beijing Time. For most other parts of China, they "have used standard time of 120° longitude around the year 1950 to 1953." He dubbed it the "chaotic period", since no government agency announced and enforced this rule of time, instead the cities synced to the unified time at their pace.
In the 2003 article, Guo obtained two independent sources that verified the Beijing Time of 1949 was using apparent/true solar time (GMT+7:56) and not mean solar time (7:46) or standard time of 120° longitude (8:00). However, he had doubts about that, since he thought apparent solar time is a step back to time measurements in the early 20th century, and standard time signals can be obtained easily from overseas stations at the time. The 1954 Chinese Astronomical Almanac mentioned that "except Xinjiang and Tibet, the whole country uses standard time of 120° longitude." He has yet to find out exactly when did Beijing Time switch back to GMT+8 between 1949 and 1954 in the article. I will try to look for later articles that reference this work.
For Tibet, the standard time of 90° longitude was used prior to March 1959, also known as Lhasa Time. After the Tibetan Uprising that month and the Panchen Lama took over, the author surmised that the transition from Lhasa Time to Beijing Time happened at the second half of 1959. He tried to look for "first-hand accounts" on this, but found none so far. On the other hand, Guo said time zone changes for Xinjiang is relatively well documented.
The Revolutionary Committee of Xinjiang and Xinjiang military notified on 9 June 1969, that starting from 1 July 1969, Beijing Time would be put into effect for the entire Xinjiang province. On 7 April 1975, the same committee put out a notice to be enforced on 1 May, that except military, rail-road, civil aviation, postal and telecommunication services, the schedules for government, factories, mines, businesses and schools would use Urumqi Time. Due to poor implementation of this notice, they again informed on 10 June 1977 that "schedules for work, meeting etc. should only use Urumqi Time for the whole province."
In the end, the Xinjiang People's Government decided that starting 1 February 1986, the entire province would use Urumqi Time. Whenever Beijing Time is used, they should be stated explicitly. According to Guo, this particular rule is more effectively put into practice. The question for tz database is whether the switch to Urumqi Time in Xinjiang is on 1975 (when it was first announced) or 1986 (when it was more commonly implemented).
To conclude, all of China currently is in the UTC+8:00 time zone except for Xinjiang province, according to the articles. The central Chinese government still did not made a law to enforce the unified time zone, although it was widely accepted that China has one official time zone. Whether or not the locals all around China follow that standard time, we do not know for sure.
The 2001 article by Guo also has details about Chinese time zones from the 1900s to 1949. We can start a new thread on this if necessary.
On 2014-04-22 Luther Ma wrote:
computers and smart phones list Urumqi (or Kashgar) as having the same time as Beijing.
I don't know why this would be a very big problem to fix. Then users can choose to set their computers or cell phones to Beijing time if they want, or to Xinjiang time if they want (instead of choosing some other locality like Dacca, which works until they go on daylight time.)
Good point, and thanks for looking into this and forwarding that info. This combines with the problems that Alois Treindl has been reporting for other Chinese time zones. I did a bit more research on my own into timekeeping practice in Shanghai and came up with the attached proposed patch, which I hope addresses the issues that you and Alois raised. I've installed this into the experimental tz repository on github.
Le 1 juil. 2014 à 02:09, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> a écrit :
On 2014-04-22 Luther Ma wrote:
computers and smart phones list Urumqi (or Kashgar) as having the same time as Beijing.
I don't know why this would be a very big problem to fix. Then users can choose to set their computers or cell phones to Beijing time if they want, or to Xinjiang time if they want (instead of choosing some other locality like Dacca, which works until they go on daylight time.)
Good point, and thanks for looking into this and forwarding that info. This combines with the problems that Alois Treindl has been reporting for other Chinese time zones. I did a bit more research on my own into timekeeping practice in Shanghai and came up with the attached proposed patch, which I hope addresses the issues that you and Alois raised. I've installed this into the experimental tz repository on github. <0001-Simplify-China-s-time-zones-from-five-to-two.patch>
Isn't this in conflict with what was decided last cycle re: pre-1970 differences (e. g. the Toronto/Montreal mess)?
On 07/01/2014 03:56 PM, J Andrew Lipscomb wrote:
Isn't this in conflict with what was decided last cycle re: pre-1970 differences (e. g. the Toronto/Montreal mess)? I don't see the conflict. Asia/Beijing and Asia/Urumqi differ in behavior since 1970, whereas America/Toronto and America/Montreal did not differ.
No issue with Ürümqi zone. Questioning whether the other three Chinese zones should be removed or instead updated to the 1949 transition date. Envoyé de mon iPhone
Le 3 juil. 2014 à 01:02, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> a écrit :
On 07/01/2014 03:56 PM, J Andrew Lipscomb wrote: Isn't this in conflict with what was decided last cycle re: pre-1970 differences (e. g. the Toronto/Montreal mess)? I don't see the conflict. Asia/Beijing and Asia/Urumqi differ in behavior since 1970, whereas America/Toronto and America/Montreal did not differ.
On 07/03/2014 08:21 AM, J Andrew Lipscomb wrote:
Questioning whether the other three Chinese zones should be removed or instead updated to the 1949 transition date. From the evidence we have so far, there's reasonable doubt whether the other three Chinese zones actually existed, other than on paper. Most of the data in them appear to have been wrong, at any rate. When there's this much error and uncertainty in entries not needed for the tz database's scope, it's better to omit them.
If this turns into a problem, I'd rather turn America/Montreal back into a link than spend maintenance effort on these out-of-scope zones. We lack the resources to investigate what all the revolutionaries and warlords and foreign occupiers did in China long ago, much less resolve the inevitable historical disputes this would entail.
Ah, that part was unclear from what I had seen. I was under the impression that we knew there were distinct zones in (say) 1940, and that would fall into the category of "don't do new zones, but don't throw out either" that Montréal fell into. But if even that time period is guesswork, then not a substantial problem. Envoyé de mon iPad
Le 3 juil. 2014 à 14:33, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> a écrit :
On 07/03/2014 08:21 AM, J Andrew Lipscomb wrote: Questioning whether the other three Chinese zones should be removed or instead updated to the 1949 transition date. From the evidence we have so far, there's reasonable doubt whether the other three Chinese zones actually existed, other than on paper. Most of the data in them appear to have been wrong, at any rate. When there's this much error and uncertainty in entries not needed for the tz database's scope, it's better to omit them.
If this turns into a problem, I'd rather turn America/Montreal back into a link than spend maintenance effort on these out-of-scope zones. We lack the resources to investigate what all the revolutionaries and warlords and foreign occupiers did in China long ago, much less resolve the inevitable historical disputes this would entail.
participants (7)
-
Alois Treindl -
Gary How -
J Andrew Lipscomb -
Luther Ma -
Paul Eggert -
Philip Newton -
Sanjeev Gupta