About China time zones

[Luther Ma]

If there is to be only one alternative to choose from, then I  
certainly welcome your offer to finally incorporate Xinjiang Time that  
you made last November.

My objections were premised on the idea that you might be willing to  
modify your proposal 1) to be politically correct for China and not  
attach ethnically colored labels even though we realize that time zone  
usage is primarily ethnically determined. (As I mentioned the time  
zones in China are rather referred to in a neutral way by geographical  
names regardless of their translation. -- your proposal, on the other  
hand, besides being ethnically colored, actually goes strongly against  
local Han usage which considers Wulumuqi Time to be identical to  
Xinjiang Time +0600 UTC), and 2) to consider the ramifications for  
tzdata implementations when there are two competing names for one  
geographical point.

My own preference was to keep the change simple and, as much as  
possible, to conform to popular usage.

I am still hoping that you would consider these issues, and of course,  
am hoping to one day see XJ Time in tzdata (and not just in the  
comments)

-mld

On Sep 25, 2010, at 9:06 PM, Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] wrote:

>> I remember a discussion on this weird topic a few months ago -- as  
>> I recall, the issue is that the same location has two time zones,
>> depending on the ethnic background of the people involved.  So  
>> there ended up being two names for the place, describing two rules.
>> And the two names are the names for the place in the two languages  
>> that are used there.
>
>> Then again, it looks like the final result wasn't two rules, but  
>> just a pile of comments in the "asia" rule sourcefile,
>> and only the "PRC" rule is actually a live rule.
>
> We did end up with just comments. A proposed change was circulated  
> (2009-11-21); we got feedback that making the change might "somewhat  
> divisive" (2009-11-25), so at least for now there's just the pile of  
> comments.
>
> 				--ado
>