Beijing Time?

[Emma Baillie]

My workplace has recently included data form the tz database into our 
web services, which are used in various different countries around the 
world including (recently) China.

Our Chinese customers are quite unhappy about the fact that their 
timezone is specified as "Asia/Shanghai" not "Asia/Beijing". As one 
customer commented:

"Every one knows whole china has only one time zone which was officially 
named Beijing Time Zone, My client told me that Chinese people really 
can not understand why we missed our Capital City Time Zone on the list. 
They think it is disrespectful."

I see from the official Chinese government website, that this also 
refers to the Chinese time zone as "Beijing Time"

http://english.gov.cn/2005-08/25/content_26048.htm.

I'm wondering if there is any reason (other than historical) to continue 
to refer to the time zone in China as "Asia/Shanghai". Should it not be 
updated to reflect current Chinese usage?

Of course, in my own particular instance I can simply change it in our 
application (and will!) But this seems like a change which would be more 
generally useful.

thanks

emma baillie