Historical time zones of China
1918–49 time zones used in Republic of China
The time zones of China refer to the time zone divisions used in China between 1918 and 1949. The first time zone plan was proposed by the Central Observatory (now Beijing Ancient Observatory) of the Beiyang government in Peking (Beijing) in 1918. The proposal divided the country into five time zones: Kunlun (UTC+05:30), Sinkiang-Tibet (UTC+06:00), Kansu-Szechwan (UTC+07:00), Chungyuan (UTC+08:00) and Chinghai (UTC+08:30). These time zones were ratified in 1939 by the Nationalist government in the Standard Time Conference, hosted by the Ministry of Interior of Executive Yuan. Because of the Second Sino-Japanese War, it was also stated that Kansu-Szechwan time shall be the sole national time during the war time. After the war in 1945, these five times zones were implemented nationwide. In 1949, after the Chinese Civil War, the Central People's Government abolished the five time zones and announced to use a single time zone UTC+08:00 named Beijing Time (北京时间). The term Chungyuan Standard Time (中原標準時間) was still used by the Government of the Republic of China on Taiwan until the early 2000s.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Historical time zones of China” is 1918–49 time zones used in Republic of China. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Historical, time and zones, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1918–49 time zones used in Republic of China” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5774415. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1949, 1939 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Historical time zones of China” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.