Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think this is insane when you consider that from the very eastern tip to the westernmost border, the country spans over 3000 miles. That means it could be already night in one place and bright sunshine in another but yet they have the same time!
Do you think China should at least split up into two or three time zones?
It's only a problem when you go out west. The time zone is completely centered around Beijing time, as are so many other things in China that are Beijing-centric due to it being the political center.
"Time in China follows a single standard time of UTC+08:00, which is 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. China geographically spans five time zones and there were five time zones in use during the Republic of China (1912–1949). Since 1949 all of China has only had a single standard time"
The vast majority of the population of China lives in the eastern half of the nation. They have all the economic and political clout, so I doubt if the single official time zone will change. I am willing to bet that there are bigger complaints in the PRC than having one time zone for the entire nation. It has worked for the past 66 years, so might as well leave it alone. The sparsely populated far western regions of PRC unofficially observe a 2 hour time zone difference from Beijing time.
One thing for sure, billions of people travel by train in China. It makes the railroad schedules easier to manage. They have vast high speed train networks that travel over 200 mph. They are less likely to have a horrific train crash due to a person or computer getting a train schedule one hour off due to time zone differences. The one time zone thing is literally a matter of life and death.
The vast majority of the population of China lives in the eastern half of the nation. They have all the economic and political clout, so I doubt if the single official time zone will change. I am willing to bet that there are bigger complaints in the PRC than having one time zone for the entire nation. It has worked for the past 66 years, so might as well leave it alone. The sparsely populated far western regions of PRC unofficially observe a 2 hour time zone difference from Beijing time.
One thing for sure, billions of people travel by train in China. It makes the railroad schedules easier to manage. They have vast high speed train networks that travel over 200 mph. They are less likely to have a horrific train crash due to a person or computer getting a train schedule one hour off due to time zone differences. The one time zone thing is literally a matter of life and death.
That is indeed quite true; all the different provinces, cities and counties are linked by railway train and they all operate according to the same time zone.
As for how the different the sky looks at different parts of China, thanks to a unified time zone, they just have different work shifts/rotations/schedules.
Part of the idea is to unify the nation in an ever-centralising administrative sense.
US Population by time zone
Time zone and Percent
Eastern: 47.0%
Central: 32.9%
Mountain: 5.4%
Pacific: 14.1%
Alaska and Hawaii: 0.6%
I have heard people claim that northern American productivity is severely affected by the four major time zones. I am not sure of the percentages in Canada , but I assume they will broadly mirror those in the US. Mexico is primarily in Central Time Zone anyway. We should adopt Central and Pacific Time Zone, and just deal with the sun rising at slightly different periods of the day.
If that is too radical to deal with, the alternative would be to eliminate Pacific Time zone and just use Mountain TZ for the western portion of the continent. Although the impact would be felt most north of San Francisco to Seattle, they already deal with a lot of overcast days anyway.
The revised population distribution of US would look like
Eastern……………..52.0%
Central………………24.1%
Western……………..22.9%
Alaska and Hawaii……0.6%
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
