Time in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Observatory has kept the territory's official time since the 1880s. From 1885 it dropped a time ball at Tsim Sha Tsui so that ships in Victoria Harbour could set their chronometers, and today it disseminates time from atomic clocks over the internet. The Noonday Gun at Causeway Bay, still fired at 12:00 every day, is a reminder of that maritime past.

Summer time was used on and off between 1941 and 1979, usually from spring to October. It was dropped because the subtropical climate already gave long enough evenings and the shift brought little benefit. Since then HKT has stayed at UTC+8, the same offset as mainland China, Macau, Taiwan and Singapore.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing trades from 9:30 AM to noon and from 1:00 to 4:00 PM, and offices generally run from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. New York is 12 hours behind during American daylight time and 13 hours in winter, so 9:00 PM in Hong Kong is 9:00 or 8:00 AM in New York. London is seven or eight hours behind, which makes the Hong Kong afternoon a good match for the London morning. The HKT to EST table gives the full day hour by hour.

Hong Kong lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer at 22.3° north. In June the sun rises around 5:40 AM and sets after 7:05 PM, giving about 13 and a half hours of daylight. In December sunrise is close to 7:00 AM and sunset about 5:45 PM, roughly 10 hours 45 minutes. Solar noon falls around 12:25 PM, so the clock and the sun are only slightly out of step.