By Le Xuan YEO
Crossing the Channel Tunnel from the United Kingdom to France in February meant turning my clock forward by an hour. Yet, in China, as far as I travelled across the whole country, the time zone remained the same, at GMT +8. And now, as I turn my clock forward once again for daylight savings on 29 March, one question stuck with me: are time zones more than just geographical boundaries and circumstances?
Time zones are often treated as a neutral and technical solution to the problem of how to standardise time across a rotating planet. Sailors had always needed a chronometer and accurate timing to calculate longitude. Moreover, before the 19th century, time zones were local since cities and towns set their clocks using local sundials, creating a patchwork of times even within relatively small regions. This system functioned well enough until the expansion of railways and telecommunication demanded coordination across long distances. The need for synchronization — particularly to prevent train collisions and scheduling chaos — led to the creation of standardised time zones.
The establishment of global time zones was formalized at the International Meridian Conference of 1884, where world powers agreed to adopt a prime meridian in Greenwich, England with Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Meanwhile, France, which wanted the meridian to run through the Paris Observatory, continued using the Paris Meridian until 1911. This is because France had its own strong scientific tradition and hence, having the meridian was partly about national prestige and influence. After all, by centering global time on the GMT, Britain had effectively inscribed its influence into the temporal order of the modern world.
Today, time zones continue to mirror political authority rather than geographic logic. De jure, time zones should follow longitudinal lines, roughly fifteen degrees apart. Yet, de facto, they zigzag across maps, bending to accommodate national borders, economic ties and cultural affiliations. For one, China is the largest sovereign nation in the world that officially only observes the time zone of GMT +8. Despite being almost as wide as the continental United States, a single time zone has been maintained because of the legacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s desire for unified control. This results in practical inconveniences, such as for cities where the sun does not come up until 10am or later, to restaurants staying open for dinner until the wee hours past midnight.
Daylight saving time (DST) introduces another layer of politics, as while originally promoted as a way to conserve energy and make better use of daylight, it has become a contentious issue in many countries. Governments must weigh competing interests: businesses that benefit from extended evening daylight, farmers who often oppose clock changes, and citizens concerned about health and sleep disruption. In 2018, the European Commission proposed abolishing DST since public consultations showed that 84% of 4.6 million respondents across the bloc supported scrapping it. Nonetheless, despite strong public support, the European Union has failed to reach consensus on this issue. It has been said that studies will be prepared to support decision-making but this has mostly been a farce on the EU’s part. The main arguments against eliminating DST is that allowing each country to choose its own permanent time could disrupt the synchronization of the single market, which is considered essential for avoiding significant economic losses.
In some cases, time zones have become flashpoints for domestic political debate, especially when official clock times create disruptions in daily life or differ from the schedules of key economic partners. The Department of Transportation in the United States sets time zones, taking into account the “convenience of commerce” when deciding where to draw lines. This means that regions are often grouped together based on economic ties rather than longitudinal position, producing irregular boundaries that sometimes split states or closely connected communities.
For example, for many years in Indiana, timekeeping practices have been historically fragmented, with different counties observing different combinations of time zones and daylight saving time. This made things confusing for people who lived in one time zone but worked in another, because they had to keep changing their schedules and making sure they knew when meetings were. The situation became politically contentious and led to a statewide reform in 2005 that standardized the observance of DST. However, even after this change, some counties continued to petition for shifts between Eastern and Central Time, and communities continue to lobby to have time zone boundaries redrawn. This illustrates how strongly local communities feel about aligning their clocks with their economic and social networks, which can be hard for governments to balance given competing priorities.
Time zones, in this sense, are not just measured, they are lived, and changes to it can feel deeply personal. And this is perhaps why humankind has sought to use it not just as a means of maintaining power, but also as a way to promote cooperation and connectivity in the world that we live in.
