Hong Kong Time Now

Hong Kong is situated in Asia and becomes one of the special administrative regions (SAR) of China since July 1997. It uses the standard time which is 8 hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT +8). The official timekeeper of the Hong Kong Time (HKT) is the Hong Kong Observatory. Although they had adopted the daylight saving measures in 1941, the practice was eliminated after 1979 following a decline in popularity. The legal time in Hong Kong was maintained based on the Greenwich Mean Time until it was shifted after the Hong Kong handover to the Universal Standard Time. Currently, the time in this region is defined as UTC +8.

A 3-inch Transit Circle and a 6-inch equatorial mount were used by the Hong Kong Observatory to determine the Hong Kong time based on astronomical observations. Both the transit circle and equatorial mount were lost in the Second World War. The accuracy in timing has improved gradually in Hong Kong from the few seconds of the daily engineering tolerance to one-fifth of a second. The recent Hong Kong Time can now be retrieved from the Network Time Server of the observatory. It has also been defined in the General Clauses Ordinance, Laws of Hong Kong.