Urumqi is not rural, it's the capital city of Xinjiang.
I agree though that they're likely behind the Internet curve compared to say Silicon Valley, but surely screwing up the days of tens of millions of people to make life slightly more convenient for people who have a lot of Internet interactions doesn't really make much sense.
For those people, surely they could just adopt a single timezone as a frame of reference?
Re:Time to Dump Time Zones
by BurningFrog on Monday November 07, 2016 @12:22AM
(#12888986)
Yeah, it probably doesn't make sense today, but as the Urumqians, like the rest of us have more and more of their interactions with people in other places, it will make more sense each year.
I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right about the adoption. Assuming I'm right and this makes sense, the people who need it the most will start using it between them, more and more people will join them, and when the official world switches over, it will be a formal acceptance of how things already work.
If I'm right.
Who knows, maybe Internet time will become a thing after all:
This cause is driven by our increasing interactions with people in other time zones, and the problem will keep getting bigger as the world gets smaller.
Xinjiang is probably a bit behind that curve, but it will happen there too.