EZYCLOCK

Time in Shanghai

The current local time in Shanghai, China — updating live, with the difference from your own clock.

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Shanghai time explained

The whole of China runs on a single time zone, eight hours ahead of UTC, despite the country spanning what would naturally be five. There is no daylight saving. In the far west of Xinjiang this means official sunrise can fall after 10:00 in winter, and many residents there keep an unofficial local time two hours behind the clock on the wall.

Shanghai does not observe daylight saving. Its offset from UTC is the same all year round, which makes scheduling with it noticeably simpler.

Reaching Shanghai

A Shanghai afternoon reaches the European morning, but the United States is effectively a next-day conversation — the overlap with New York is only the very early morning or the late evening.

How this page works

The time above is calculated on your own device from the IANA time zone database that ships with your browser, using the zone Asia/Shanghai. Nothing is fetched from a server, and the offset shown is whatever is currently in force rather than a number typed into the page — so when a country changes its rules, this page changes with it.

The difference from your own clock is worked out the same way, comparing Shanghai's current offset against your device's. If your computer's clock is wrong, so is that comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Does all of China really use one time zone?

Officially yes, since 1949. It is by far the widest single-zone country in the world, and the practical effect in the far west is that daily life shifts several hours later relative to the clock.

Is Beijing time the same as Shanghai time?

Yes. "Beijing time" is the name for the national standard; Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Ürümqi all officially share it.

Does Shanghai change its clocks?

No. Shanghai keeps one offset all year, so the difference to anywhere that does change its clocks will shift by an hour twice a year — from their end, not this one.