In June, they wouldn't. That's why we currently change the clocks. But changing the clocks sucks, so you have to optimize for either the winter or the summer.

In the summer, we already have lots of sunlight regardless, so it doesn't make sense to optimize for that.

Winter sucks anyways when you live in the north. I grew up at 56 degrees north and you are cooked no matter what is done. Better to optimize April-October.

Okay but conversely, in summer when there's lots of sunlight, the benefit of an extra hour, while not zero, isn't that significant.

We tried permanent DST in the US in the 1970s. People hated it.

Clock is a social contract. China has just one time zone and it seems to work fine.

There's a noticeable increase in sleep disorders and related conditions in the far west of the single time zone [0]. I think when it's on the order of a single hour's shift for daylight savings the effects are pretty negligible but they are measurable.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY9mXPcloaM

The thing about DST is it makes every scheduled event move, all at the same time.

It shifts my contracted start time at work, my first meeting, when places start serving lunch, when my kid needs to get to ballet class, when my sportsball club meets, and when the supermarket closes. All at once.

Lawmakers changing the time shown on clocks is, I think, a lot easier than society changing the social contract.

The equation change a bit when you have distributed teams.

Not sure how well that works in China, but I like that when I travel I can have a similar schedule compared to home.

I wouldn't want to have to learn a different schedule such as getting up at midnight, having lunch at 04:00 then going to bed at 15:00. That would also make jet lag much worse because you wouldn't be able to rely on your watch to know what activity you're supposed to be doing at the time.

> Clock is a social contract. China has just one time zone and it seems to work fine.

If it didn't would the government actually care?

Most of the population is in the east, in which clock-noon and solar-noon is better matched:

* https://www.china-mike.com/china-travel-tips/tourist-maps/ch...

Doubt Beijing listens to the complaints from Lasa (Tibet) much.

It's always annoyed me a bit how everyone talks about sunrise in winter and sunset year round, but sunrise in summer is almost never mentioned. This is the sole reason if we settle on one or the other I want sunrise later.