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With the official national standard time being Beijing Time (BJT) or China Standard Time (CST), daylight saving time has not been part of the picture since 1991. In fact, the country has only one time zone, even if its territory spreads into almost five geographical time zones. It would be logical to think that multiple time zones existed in China, however, it would be wrong. Time zon es in ChinaĬhina is the third-largest country in the world, with almost 1.5 bln people living in it. Since 2007, the standard time zones are categorised in hourly intervals from UTC, while they were based on the movement of the Sun in the sky compared with meridians 15° apart west Greenwich (GMT). This is after investigators found no evidence of an official map of the time zone boundaries.Ī report by the inspector general of the DOT explained that “The official boundaries are narratively described with various types of coordinates and geographic features such as lines of longitude, State or country lines, and rivers.” In September 2022, the DOT declared that a project of creating this map exists and that it will be published once completed. The boundaries of these time zones are regulated by the Department of Transportation, but there is still no clear map of it. Eastern, also called Zone R, includes the states on the Atlantic coast and the eastern part of the Ohio Valley.Central, Zone S, comprises the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Valley, and the majority of the Great Plains,.Mountain is Zone T, and it covers the states that include the Rocky Mountains and the western part of the Great Plains.Pacific, Zone U, comprises the stated on the Pacific coast, Nevada and Idaho.Hawaii, zone W includes Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands, and there is no daylight saving.The odd thing, however, is that even if the US has very distinct time zones, it still has no defined boundaries for them. However, considering the size of the country, the amount of time zones is quite normal. The majority of them follow daylight saving time (DST) for approximately half a year starting from the spring months. The US is divided into six standard time zones. That’s not to mention half-hour time zones, similar to the old Amsterdam time, which ruled that Amsterdam was 20 minutes ahead of London. Australia, on the other hand, has three time zones. However, not all countries follow the same conventions: China, for instance, operates in one single time zone (CST). That line determines the rest of the time zones around the world. Time was standardised and a prime meridian was chosen as Greenwich, London (hence Greenwich Mean Time), with eight countries aligning including, France, Spain, Algeria and Togo. In 1884, 26 countries met in Washington, DC, to attend the Meridian Conference. Clocks display time from various time zones at Warsaw Stock Exchange, Poland, part of Central European Time. Time zones are pretty simple, right? In the EU, there are three standardised time zones: Western European Time in Ireland and Portugal, Central European Time, covering the bulk of the mainland such as Germany and Poland, and Eastern European Time, which includes Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus.
