Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
People in China manage to live with just one time zone for the entire country. I am sure we can manage to eliminate DST.
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If you look at a
time zone map and compare it to a
population density map of China, you will see that the vast majority of China's population lives in either the correct geographic time zone or one hour either side of their correct geographic time zone. Being out of sync by an hour is generally not problematic (which is why we can do DST in the first place).
The regions that are 2+ hours out of sync are lower population areas that don't have a lot of political power in China.
It's my understanding that in the western parts of the country, the locals generally live their lives according to the local daylight hours and only those who work in government related fields actually follow the national time (I don't know if that's true, but it's what I've seen mentioned when this topic has come up before).
That already happens a lot in North America too, where people in the west will work an earlier schedule because they have to interact with Eastern time zone co-workers. I've known many people who work 7-3 or even 6-2 in Calgary to sync up with a 9-5 or 8-4 schedule of co--workers in Toronto or Ottawa.