Time in China

in Mount Li, Lintong, Xi'an, ShaanxiIn the 1870s, the Shanghai Xujiahui Observatory was constructed by a French Catholic missionary. In 1880s officials in Shanghai French Concession started to provide a time announcement service using the Shanghai Mean Solar Time provided by the aforementioned observatory for ships into and out of Shanghai. By the end of 19th century, the time standard provided by the observatory had been switched to GMT+08:00. The practice has spread to other coastal ports, and in 1902 the "Coastal Time" was proposed to be the universal time zone for all the coastal ports in China. However, the time zone for the rest of China remained undetermined. Until 1913, the official time standard for the whole of China was still the apparent solar time of Beijing, the capital of the country at the time. Starting in 1914, the Republic of China government began adopting the Beijing Local Mean Solar Time as the official time standard. By 1918, five standard time zones had been proposed by the Central Observatory of Beiyang government of Republic of China, including the Kunlun (UTC+05:30), Sinkiang-Tibet (UTC+06:00), Kansu-Szechwan (UTC+07:00), Chungyuan (UTC+08:00), and Changpai (UTC+08:30). Time zone changes in Tibet are undocumented, but Beijing Time was in use until at least the mid-1950s. Between 1969 and 1986, the time zone was switched repeatedly between Xinjiang Time (UTC+06:00) and Beijing Time. Daylight saving time was observed from 1945 to 1948, and from 1986 to 1991. In 1997 and 1999, Hong Kong and Macau were transferred to China from the United Kingdom and Portugal respectively, being established as special administrative regions. Although the sovereignty of the SARs belongs to China, they retain their own policies regarding time zones for historical reasons. Because of their geographical locations, both are within the UTC+08:00 time zone, which is the same as the national standard, Beijing time. ==Geography==

is significantly behind and western parts of China are significantly ahead of local solar time as a single standard time offset of UTC+08:00 is observed across the whole of China, even though the country spans almost five geographical time zones (73°26'E - 134°46'E). As an illustration of the wide range, the daylight hours (Beijing Time) for the seats of the westernmost (both including and not including Xinjiang due to local customs, see below) and easternmost counties, calculated for the year 2010, are shown here: The border with Afghanistan at the Wakhjir Pass has the most significant official change of clocks for any international land frontier: UTC+08:00 in China to UTC+04:30 in Afghanistan. == Regions with special time regulations ==

Xinjiang In Xinjiang, two time standards are used in parallel, namely Beijing Time and Xinjiang Time. The time offset is UTC+06:00, which is two hours behind Beijing, and is shared with neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. Some local Xinjiang authorities now use both time standards side by side. Television stations schedule programmes in different time standards according to their nature. The double time standard is particularly observable in Xinjiang Television, which schedules its Chinese channel according to Beijing time and its Uyghur and Kazakh channels according to Xinjiang time. Regardless, Beijing Time users in Xinjiang usually schedule their daily activities two hours later than those who live in eastern China. As such, stores and offices in Xinjiang are commonly open from 10:00 to 19:00 Beijing Time, which equals 08:00 to 17:00 in Ürümqi Time. (; ) are both UTC+08:00 all year round, thus in line with Beijing time, and daylight saving time has not been used since 1979 in Hong Kong and Macau. In Hong Kong, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the basis in 1904, and UTC was adopted as a standard in 1972. Before that, local time was determined by astronomical observations at Hong Kong Observatory using a 6-inch Lee Equatorial telescope and a transit circle. Taiwan Taiwan, which is not governed under the authority of the People's Republic of China (see political status of Taiwan), also uses UTC+08:00, which corresponds well to its longitude. == IANA time zone database ==

The territory of the People's Republic of China is covered in the IANA time zone database by the following zones. "Asia/Shanghai" is used instead of "Asia/Beijing" because Shanghai is the most populous city in the zone. Columns marked with * are from the file zone.tab of the database. Backward compatibility zone The following zones, including Asia/Kashgar, Asia/Chongqing, and Asia/Harbin, are kept in the "backzone" file of the IANA time zone database for backward compatibility. == See also ==