RE: Some modifications of China related timezone info.
I agree with the drawbacks of using the most populated city as a proxy for a time zone. In this case, what's wrong with calling the tz zone Asia/China and being done with it? ++PLS -----Original Message----- From: tz-request@elsie.nci.nih.gov [mailto:tz-request@elsie.nci.nih.gov] On Behalf Of Zhe Su Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 7:06 AM To: Paul Eggert Cc: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Some modifications of China related timezone info. Hi, And in my opinion, using the rule of using most populous location to identify each region is not a generic way for every countries. IMO, we should use different rules for different countries to fit their local circumstances. For China (or more exactly, PRC), it's apparently not suitable to use the population rule. Because the most populous location in China is Chongqing, which is belong to Sichuan province, the most populous province of China. But Chongqing is far less developed than Shanghai and Beijing, so it's far less popular than Beijing and Shanghai. So for China, I'd prefer to use the most important and popular location, Beijing, the capital of China to identify our unique timezone. Regards James Su On 4/29/06, Zhe Su <james.su@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, I still can't agree with you. It's harmless to add "Asia/Beijing". And China now uses only one timezone, which is called officially "China Standard Time" and indeed it's known as Beijing Time. Now we have five timezones for China in asia/zone.tab: "Asia/Shanghai", "Asia/Chongqing", "Asia/Urumqi", "Asia/Harbin", "Asia/Kashgar". But they are known as historic timezones (according to comments in asia file). After 1949, the establishing of People's Republic of China, we uses only one timezone, which is called "Beijing Time" or "China Standard Time" officially. So if you think we should choose a most populous city of China to represent the only one "China Standard Time", that is Chongqing rather than Shanghai, because Chongqing has more than 27 million population. But, I still think using "Asia/Beijing" to represent the only timezone used in Peoples Republic of China is the most reasonable way.
Regards James Su
On 4/29/06, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
"Zhe Su" <james.su@gmail.com> writes:
So, is it ok to just add "Asia/Beijing" into the database along with "Asia/Shanghai"? So that people can choose whatever they want.
For now I'd rather not do that, for the reasons already mentioned.
"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.
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