[Olog-hai]

Beyond China’s borders, Pinyin allowed the standardization of Chinese names. For instance, it’s a big reason why the name Westerners commonly use for the Chinese capital shifted from “Peking” to “Beijing.” …

Peking is the older Postal Romanization, based on although not exactly like Wade-Giles (in which China’s capital is spelled Pei-ching) which the West was using prior to CPC-approved Pinyin.

I still prefer Wade-Giles in spite of Pinyin’s advantages (such as using diacritical marks versus number superscripts to indicate tones) because Pinyin is a sign of the CPC’s influence moving unduly beyond its borders and infiltrating other cultures, not to mention Wade-Giles still holding strong in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. I will still use “Mao Tse-tung” instead of “Mao Zedong” (the Z is pronounced ts like in pizza) and even turn “Xi Jinping” into “Hsi Chin-p’ing”. (BTW, Zhou’s name would be rendered Chou You-kuang in Wade-Giles.)

[ifinnegan]

“Pinyin is a sign of the CPC’s influence moving unduly beyond its borders and infiltrating other cultures”

That is what I’ve found worst about it. I like pinyin, but didn’t like that aspect of it.

But simplified characters is worse.

[ifinnegan]

“Hsi Chin-p’ing”

Yeah. I used to like doing stuff like that. Just to bug the early 50 centers.

For example Chiang tse-min for Jiang Zemin.

As far as Wades Pinyin and other romanizations. To some degree they romanization also reflects slight regional accent variations.