Some modifications of China related timezone info.

[Paul Eggert]

Ken Pizzini <tz. at explicate.org> writes:

> the populations do seem to have converged significantly over the 15
> or so years since the Asia/Shanghai entry was created, and the trend
> lines strongly suggest that if Beijing has not yet overtaken
> Shanghai as the largest city in China, it is very likely to do so
> soon.

That depends on whose estimates one uses, and what one means by
"soon".  If we take estimates recently published by Chinese news
agencies for the end of 2005, for example, Shanghai had 17.78 million
people with a 2.030% annual growth rate since 2000
<http://english.sina.com/china/1/2006/0406/72038.html>, whereas
Beijing had 15.36 million people with a 2.135% annual growth rate in
the same period
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/20/content_4451085.htm>, so
at current rates it will take about 142 years for Beijing's population
to surpass Shanghai, at which point both cities will have populations
of about 309 million people.

To put it mildly, I don't have a lot of faith in these estimates, but
until this thing settles out with a clear winner there's no rush.
There is an advantage of keeping the Zone names stable, which our
other correspondents have reminded us of periodically.  I'd rather not
get into the business of discussing zone names changes based on
guesswork forecasts of population growth.  (It's hard enough just
keeping track of the clocks.  :-)