Hi Paul, Thanks for your feedback. 在 2011-07-02六的 08:25 -0700，Paul Eggert wrote:

We have conflicting reports of whether Shanghai has more people than Beijing. The official Chinese figures (from the 2010 census) say that Shanghai has more people; apparently some sources (which I haven't looked into) say the reverse. In a situation like this I'm inclined to leave the names alone. This is in accordance with the line in the "Theory" file that says "Do not change established names if they only marginally violate the above rules". (In this case, it's not even clear that the existing name violates the rules.)

The official Chinese figures (from the 2010 census) only include the people who have local ID(hukou 户口), it do not reflect the population of a city. If the population of a city means how many people lives in the city, the real number is much more than the data released by China gov. For example, construction workers, home maid, even restaurant waiters, and other low level works, most of them do not have local ID(hukou 户 口). They work in the city, but was not included in the released data, these people maybe occupy more than 20% of the population of Beijing. I hope I can explain these data, and of cause, if you are really want to know the real population of Beijing and Shanghai, you can come to China, I'm glad to be your guide, you can see what I see, feel what I fell. My suggestion is you can just treat these data as a reference, but not judge dependencies. I think it's a history mistake, as a result of miss understanding of China, that's not your fault, just in 90's of last century, you can touch very few real data from China. Let's forget the detail rules, focus on the the original goal of tzdata, which let people in different timezone know where the are exactly, but Asia/Shanghai confuse most Chinese and foreigners(please let me assume that most foreigner know Bejing-:). If you insist on Asia/Shanghai, I can promise that somebody in China will ask the same question again and agian in the nonstop future. I beg you let's save the life of both you and me, stop the endless and bothering discussion. If you insist on the stable of tzdata, I can understand it absolutely. I think the best choice between you and me, is keep Asia/Shanghai and just add Asia/Beijing, you can split China into two region, North China and South China, both region has their own representation, that break nothing. Sincerely, An Yang

The name that 'TZ' uses for the time zone is somewhat arbitrary, and need have nothing to do with the user interface for choosing time zones, which surely ought to be using labels like "北京时间" rather than anything in ASCII.

From other sources, I understand that the Chinese Civil War broke out in 1947 and is deemed to have ended with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949. Chiang Kai-Shek retreated to Taiwan on Dec. 10, 1949. Mao Zedong's Communists controlled Manchuria and significant parts of Hebei and Shandong provinces, among others, at the start. They occupied Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai during the period July 1948 - June

An Yang suggests that there were two governments, designated North China and South China, between World War II and 1949, both recognized by the U.S. I don't think that's correct. To be more certain, I pulled out the reference books I have on hand from about that period. Among them were the 1946 and 1949 editions of the World Almanac, and the 1947 and 1949 editions of the Information Please Almanac. The almanacs usually have editorial cutoff dates late in the year preceding their date. Thus, the 1949 World Almanac covers events up until December 1948. The 1949 World Almanac article on China is typical. It mentions only one capital (Nanking, now Nanjing), one government dominated by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), one constitution, and one president (Chiang Kai-Shek). As sub-headings under China, it describes Mongolia, Sin-Kiang (now Xinjiang), Tibet (now Xizang), Manchuria, Kwantung (now Guandong), and Formosa (now Taiwan). Here is what it says about them. "Mongolia, although nominally of China, was somewhat shaken loose from Chinese adherence after World War I. Outer Mongolia is a republic .... At a plebiscite (Oct. 20, 1945) the Republic voted to sever all ties with China .... [In] Inner Mongolia .... [a]n autonomous Republic was set up by Chinese Communists." "Tibet, a country of Asia ... expelled the Chinese garrisons. But since the establishment of the National Government (1927) a great deal has been accomplished to bring Tibet closer under the influence of the Chinese Government .... The head of the government is the Dalai Lama ..." "Manchuria, the Manchu state ... was proclaimed an independent nation (Feb. 18, 1932) ... was renamed Manchukuo. At the close of the Sino-Japanese war (1945) the territory was returned to China ...." "Formosa ... was returned to China as a province (1945) after the surrender of Japan in World War II." Sinkiang is described as being an integral part of China. Kwantung, the Russian lease around Dairen (Dalian), "was restored to the U.S.S.R. by the Yalta Agreement (Feb. 11, 1945), which agreement also internationalized Dairen." 1949. As far as I can tell, the U.S. never recognized two Chinas during the period 1945-1970. It may have transferred its recognition from the Nationalists to the Communists for about a year in 1949-1950. If there were ever a northern and a southern country in this time frame, they would have been Manchuria/Manchukuo and China proper. Neither Beijing nor Shanghai is in Manchuria. There may be more details that I haven't discovered. If so, I would like to see supporting documentation. The prima facie evidence is that there were not a North China and South China as described. Gwillim Law 2011/8/17 An Yang <an.euroford@gmail.com>

** Hi Arthur and Paul,

I find new evidence, before 1949 Oct, there are two governments in China, North China and South China, just like many countries split into two countries after the War II, both of them were accepted by US government. Beijing is the largest city in North China, and Shanghai maybe the largest city in South China.

Regards, An Yang

On 18.08.11 04:46, Paul Eggert wrote:

Yes, the situation in China was quite different back then, but luckily for us our cutoff date is the POSIX epoch of 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. In the tz database we don't create a new zone merely because some locality had different clocks before 1970. If we did, we'd need hundreds of zones for Indiana alone.

We (a group of timezone researchers for astrology purposes) are planning to do exactly that, create the required 300+ Indiana zones (Shanks/Pottenger uses 350+ but is not complete), to cover pre-1970 Indiana timezone history. It will take a lot of work and we understand that these extra zone will not get entry into standard tzdata file distribution. But I think if we maintain a separate 'history' zone fileset outside, tzcode will work with these extra zones of we include them in the zic compilation step. For China as well. Writing the zone files is only one part of the work, the other is describing precisely for which area the extra zones apply, and which area is covered by the existing standard tzdata zones.