Greenwich Mean Time
The Hong Kong Time was first set to Local Mean Time (GMT+07:36:42) on 1 January 1885 at 13:00 by the then Royal Observatory Hong Kong. In 1904, the Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the basis for Hong Kong Time, the time was set at 8 hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time. The current Coordinated Universal Time system was adopted as an official time standard on 1 January 1972. However, the legal Hong Kong Time still remained based on Greenwich Mean Time until it was changed to Universal Standard Time in 1998 after the Hong Kong handover.