Posted by Dave Thewlis on March 16, 2005 at 16:08:03 from 69.107.96.82 user dthewlis.
In Reply to: Re: Renaming "traditional" names posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on March 15, 2005 at 22:25:48:
In the U.S. the adoption of Pinyin spelling for Chinese (not only place names but people's names) happened I think in the early 1970s, about the time of then-President Nixon going to China. I don't know when it was generally introduced within China but that's when it seems to have become accepted usage here.
I was told when I visited there that Peking University is one of two entities which petitioned the government to retain "Peking" (I believe on the basis that it had had that name for about a hundred years). Unfortunately I don't know the name of the other Peking entity. Today if a story refers to "Beijing University" I tend to assume the writer didn't research very well and wonder what else he or she got wrong.