Which time zone covers the greatest area?

Once again the answer is China. China used to have 5 time zones but they were all rolled into 1 in 1949.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone#Standard_time_zones

What about Europe? All EU countries except Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, Finland, Greece and the former Soviet Union are on the same time zone - GMT+1. Besides that, their time zone is shared by most of northern and western Africa.

Good point ARP, but the horses mouth says otherwise!

"In terms of area, China is the largest country with only one time zone (UTC+8). Before 1949, China was separated into five time zones. China also has the widest spanning time zone."

This link shows coloured diagrams of the world time zones.

http://www.worldtimezone.com/

It's very hard to see which is largest.

GMT + 1 is very large as mentioned by Arp.

GMT + 8 has all of China (as mentioned by Mike) but also all of Western Australia and a few islands.

GMT - 3 also covers a fair amount with all of Greenland and half of South America.

Cant find anywhere stating the sizes though (China's the largest single country Mike but there can be a lot more than one country in the same zone.)

This is also not counting Daylight Savings time anywhere...