北京, Peking or Beijing?The Chinese communist regime’s demand, starting in 1979, that we stop saying Peking and Can-ton and instead start saying Beijing.

Beijing" is from pinyin Běijīng, which is romanized from 北京, the Chinese name for this city. The pinyin system of transliteration was approved by the Chinese government in 1958, but little used until 1979. It was gradually adopted by various news organizations, governments, and international agencies over the next decade.

The Chinese communist regime’s demand, starting in 1979, that we stop saying Peking and Can-ton and instead start saying Beijing and Guandong was . . . comparable to the Germans suddenly insisting that we start calling Munich München or the Russians demanding we call Moscow Moskva...

OFFICIAL NAME: People's Republic of China. FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Communist state. CAPITAL: Beijing (Peking) POPULATION: 1,397,897,720. OFFICIAL LANGUAGES: Standard Chinese, Mandarin. MONEY: Yuan (or renminbi) AREA: 3,705,405 square miles (9,596,960 square kilometers) MAJOR MOUNTAIN RANGES: Himalaya.

International means between or involving different countries. It is facilitated by the Globalization Phenomenon, which increasingly erases the constraints of geography on economic, social and cultural arrangements.