Current Time in Shanghai, China

How Shanghai Keeps Time

Shanghai keeps CST, UTC+8. The live clock normally synchronizes to the site time source and then applies the IANA rules for Shanghai; until synchronization succeeds, it uses the device clock as a fallback. Daylight-saving changes are applied only where that zone actually observes them.

Shanghai runs on the Asia/Shanghai zone in the IANA time zone database, which is UTC+8 right now. There is no daylight saving here, so that offset holds all year and the difference to other places only changes when they move their own clocks.

The sun rises in Shanghai at 6:03 am today and sets at 5:13 pm — 11 hours 10 minutes of daylight, with solar noon at 11:38 am. Those times come from the city’s coordinates (31.23, 121.47), so they shift a little every day of the year.

On the two solstices, Shanghai has about 14 hours 11 minutes of daylight in June and 10 hours 7 minutes in December. The difference is about 4 hours 4 minutes, which shows how strongly the local daylight cycle changes through the year.

The whole of China keeps one time, so the clock on this page is also the clock in Beijing and in every other city listed below.

Shanghai at a Glance

How Shanghai Compares with Other Cities

Read the last column as the other city relative to Shanghai. Where either place uses daylight saving, the gap changes for part of the year — the time difference calculator always shows today’s figure.

Nearby Listed Cities to Shanghai

Distances are straight-line geographic distances between the coordinates used by the directory; road or rail distances will be longer.

Other Cities in China

All of these read UTC+8, the same as Shanghai, because China keeps one zone nationally. Each page adds that city’s own sunrise, sunset and prayer times, which do differ.