Time Difference Between Beijing and London
London is 8h behind Beijing in standard time, and 7h behind while London is on daylight saving time.
Beijing keeps the same clock all year. London clocks move forward on the last Sunday of March and back on the last Sunday of October. The figures above cover each part of the year. They do not come from the offset on the day the site was built. The live clocks use the current time.
Working Hours Overlap
For each hour of Beijing's working day (9:00-18:00), here is the corresponding local time in London. Rows highlighted green fall within standard working hours (9:00-18:00) in both cities. Each block is one part of the year, so the table does not change with the day this page was built.
8h behind (standard time)
| Beijing | London | Both working hours? |
|---|---|---|
| 9 AM | 1 AM | No |
| 10 AM | 2 AM | No |
| 11 AM | 3 AM | No |
| 12 PM | 4 AM | No |
| 1 PM | 5 AM | No |
| 2 PM | 6 AM | No |
| 3 PM | 7 AM | No |
| 4 PM | 8 AM | No |
| 5 PM | 9 AM | Yes |
| 6 PM | 10 AM | No |
7h behind (daylight saving time in London, while Beijing is on standard time)
| Beijing | London | Both working hours? |
|---|---|---|
| 9 AM | 2 AM | No |
| 10 AM | 3 AM | No |
| 11 AM | 4 AM | No |
| 12 PM | 5 AM | No |
| 1 PM | 6 AM | No |
| 2 PM | 7 AM | No |
| 3 PM | 8 AM | No |
| 4 PM | 9 AM | Yes |
| 5 PM | 10 AM | Yes |
| 6 PM | 11 AM | No |
Best Time to Meet
8h behind (standard time)
- 5 PM-6 PM in Beijing (9 AM-10 AM in London) works for both sides. It falls within 9 AM-6 PM in both time zones.
7h behind (daylight saving time in London, while Beijing is on standard time)
- 4 PM-6 PM in Beijing (9 AM-11 AM in London) works for both sides. It falls within 9 AM-6 PM in both time zones.
How the Difference Changes
Only London changes its clocks, so the gap is not one number. The rules are above. The dates for the year you are reading this page load below.
Loading this year's switch dates…
Working Across Beijing and London
Seven hours leaves Beijing and London one shared slice of day, and only one. London's morning is Beijing's late afternoon: 9 AM to noon in London is 4 PM to 7 PM in Beijing. That is the entire window. By 2 PM in London the Beijing office has left, and Beijing's own morning happens while London sleeps. The Beijing side gives up the tail of its day as a matter of course, since a 6 PM meeting there is 11 AM in London and easy for anyone to attend. London teams wanting more room should start at 8 AM, which reaches Beijing at 3 PM instead of 4 PM. It is the rare adjustment that costs the person making it and helps the other side.
Beijing's clock is constant, so all the movement on this pair comes from London's daylight saving. The gap is eight hours while London is on standard time, seven hours from the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October, and eight again after that. Winter costs the Beijing side an hour of evening, because the 4 PM slot that matches London's 9 AM in summer becomes 5 PM once the clocks go back. The other date worth putting in the calendar is Chinese New Year, which moves every year and closes offices for a week or more around it. A London team setting a February deadline against a Beijing counterpart should look up the actual date rather than assume the month is ordinary.
Roughly ten to eleven hours nonstop, though the figure depends on the carrier: Chinese airlines still fly the short northern track over Russia, while European ones routing around that airspace take longer where they operate the route at all. Westbound to London is the kinder arrival, a long day that finishes at a plausible hour. Eastbound to Beijing lands you in late afternoon or evening with a body seven or eight hours behind local time, and the first night is usually broken around 2 AM. Leave a day before anything that matters. Morning daylight after an eastbound arrival does more for the adjustment than anything sold at the airport pharmacy.
Beijing
Beijing uses the Asia/Shanghai time zone, at UTC+8 all year. This zone does not observe daylight saving time.
London
London uses the Europe/London time zone. Standard time is UTC, and daylight saving time is UTC+1.