When Nuria Shamsed* was a child, she would sit with her family in front of her grandparents’ house on the outskirts of the Western Chinese city of Kashgar in the Xinjiang region and watch the summer sun set at about midnight.
Kashgar is not located particularly far north – it is approximately at the same latitude as the Turkish capital, Ankara, where sundown is several hours earlier.
But the sun goes down late in the Kashgar night because the Chinese Communist Party decided that all of China must operate in the same time zone as Beijing.
This means that clocks in Kashgar are about three hours ahead of the time that the city’s geographical location actually dictates.
“The midnight sunsets with my family are among the fondest memories I have from my childhood in Xinjiang,” 26-year-old Shamsed told Al Jazeera, speaking from her new home in San Diego, California, the United States.
“But at the same time, the phenomenon also shows how the Chinese authorities want to control everything in Xinjiang – even our time,” she said.
Police officers patrol the square in front of Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, in 2021 [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]
Time is political in China, says Yao-Yuan Yeh, who teaches Chinese history and politics at the University of St Thomas in Houston, the US, and is used to instil a sense of interconnection and control.
“It is used to reinforce the official narrative of a Chinese nation united under the rule of the Communist Party,” Yeh explained.
Time zones are constructs that are constantly being renegotiated, and in few places has this been more true than in China and elsewhere in Asia.
Xinjiang’s provincial capital, Urumqi, is geographically two hours behind Beijing, and Zaydun recounts that when he attended university in Urumqi in the 1980s and 1990s, some of his fellow Uighur students deliberately arrived two hours late for class if classes were only listed in Beijing time.
“They believed that Xinjiang time should be used in Xinjiang, and there was a sense that as an Uighur there was a responsibility to uphold the local time,” Zaydun told Al Jazeera from Maryland in the US.
Therefore, many local shops and businesses in Urumqi also opened and closed following a two-hour time difference in adherence to the local time over Beijing time.
“If you openly challenge the Beijing time now, you can be prosecuted for subversion,” he says.
“My elderly mother never used Beijing time before, but then a few years ago she suddenly started using Beijing time when we talked on the phone because she feared the consequences if she didn’t.”
Canadian-Uighur activist Rukiye Turdush says enforcing the use of Beijing time in Xinjiang is just one of many ways the Chinese authorities are trying to dilute the Uighur identity, alongside means such as social control, large-scale surveillance and mass detentions.
“Language, religion, culture, space and time are all elements of the Uighur national identity that the Chinese are trying to tear apart in Xinjiang,” Turdush says.
Other minorities in China are also experiencing that the keeping of time is the strict preserve of China’s central authorities.
“For other minorities in China’s outer regions such as the Tibetans and the Mongolians time is also controlled from Beijing,” says Yeh of the University of St Thomas.
Although there are practical and economic advantages to a single time zone, the impetus for standardisation was more about a signal the Chinese Communist Party wanted to send when it came to power in 1949.
“The Chinese state did not exercise full control over China before 1949, but the Communists sought to change that in order to consolidate and legitimise their power in China,” Yeh explains.
In pursuing that mission, controlling time became part of an official narrative about a China united under the party’s rule, which spurred the creation of a single time zone that temporally aligned the entire country with Beijing.
“Due to that, the authorities have taken a tougher stance against any kind of separatist notions among the minority groups, including any ideas about belonging to a separate time zone,” Yeh says.
Time is sovereignty
China is not the only place where time is shaped more by politics than by geography.
One look at the jigsaw puzzle that constitutes the world’s distribution of time zones clearly indicates this and recent events in Ukraine are a case in point.
In January, Russian authorities announced that annexed regions of Ukraine were to switch from Ukrainian time to Moscow time.
A wall clock with a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen in this photo illustration taken in a hotel room in Kazan, Russia, in 2015 [File: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters]
In March, Greenland also moved one hour closer to Europe.
Time can also be used by minorities to fight back against state power.
During the 25-year-long civil war in Sri Lanka between the central government and the Tamil Tigers, the government introduced a time change that set the country’s clock back half an hour. However, the Tamil Tigers refused to recognise and implement the change in 1996 in the areas of the island under their control, meaning Sri Lanka effectively existed in two different time zones simultaneously.
Just as time is used politically within the borders of nations, it is also used politically between the borders of nations.
The shift was defended as a belated reckoning with Japanese imperialists that had deprived Korea historically of its time – a reference to the early 20th century when the Japanese, as Korea’s then-colonial rulers, brought the country into the same time zone as the Empire of Japan.
A man adjusts his wristwatch in front of a clock tower in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo taken by Kyodo in 2018 [File: Kyodo via Reuters]
In fact, the establishment of modern timekeeping traces its roots back to the colonial era and it was the world’s colonial powers that confirmed the global time zone system during a conference in the US in 1884, according to Karl Benediktsson, who has studied the connection between politics and time zones at the University of Iceland.
According to Benediktsson, it is revealing that the modern time zone system is based around the so-called Greenwich meridian, or the prime meridian, which runs through Greenwich in London.
“The prime meridian could technically have been placed anywhere, but it was centred around London because Great Britain was the leading power at the time,” Benediktsson says.
While the time zone system established by Britain and the other colonial powers in the 19th century remains largely the same as the system still in use today, the division of the world within time zones has changed frequently since the dismantling of Europe’s colonial empires.
And the repositioning of postcolonial states on the world map has also led to some new and novel time zones.
The Rajabai Clock Tower in Mumbai, India [File: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters]
For example, when India gained independence from Britain in 1947, it abolished Mumbai time and Kolkata time and established Indian time as the country’s only official time.
Nepal has aligned its own time zone with the peak of the sacred Gaurishankar Mountain, located east of Kathmandu, which places the country within a quarter-hour time zone unlike most other states that position their time keeping within a certain hourly time zone or more rarely within a half-hour time zone.
Time zones are constructed
The jigsaw puzzle that makes up the map of time zones across borders and around the world reflects the many political considerations and histories at play in the creation of clock time.
Shifting geopolitical circumstances also means that the world’s time zone puzzle will likely continue to change into the future, according to the University of Iceland’s Benediktsson.
“I usually say that time zones are social constructions,” says Benediktsson, noting that the placement of countries within certain time zones was determined by people and can therefore be changed by people over and over again.
Workers are pictured beneath clocks displaying time zones in various parts of the world at an outsourcing centre in Bengaluru [File: Vivek Prakash/Reuters]
Reflecting back on her youth and observing the sun set at midnight during summer time in her native Kashgar, Nuria Shamsed believes that the enduring difference between local time and Beijing’s official time in Xinjiang demonstrates the power of people over timekeeping.
Attempts to deny the observance of local time is another tool to deprive Uighurs of their identity, Shamsed says.
“Time should not be a tool used by authoritarians to pursue their imperialist ambitions,” she says.
“I also consider it a human rights violation when Uighurs in Xinjiang do not have a say in what time defines their lives.”
*Nuria Shamsed is a pseudonym created to respect the source’s request for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
