Time offset

Time zones and time offsets

A time zone is a geographical region in which residents observe the same standard time. Although nominally a new time zone is established every 15 degrees east or west of the prime meridian (meaning a one-hour change in the time), in practice local geographical or political considerations may vary its application. The most extreme example of this is time in China, which applies a single standard time offset of UTC+08:00 (eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time), even though China spans five geographical time zones.