Samoa Sacrifices a Day for Its Future

By SETH MYDANS

The Pacific island nation of Samoa and its even tinier neighbor Tokelau are skipping Friday this week, jumping westward in time across the international date line and into the shifting economic balance of the 21st century.

The time change, officially decided in June, is meant to align Samoa with its Asian trading partners; it moves the islands’ work days further from the United States, which dominated its economy in the past.

In this giant-step version of daylight saving time, the island’s 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 who live in Tokelau, will go to sleep on Thursday and wake up on Saturday. The government has decreed that those who miss a day of work on Friday will be paid all the same.

Samoa has been out of alignment with its Asian-Pacific neighbors since 1892, when American traders persuaded it in 1892 to shift from the western side to the eastern side of the international date line to facilitate business with the West Coast of the United States. That earlier shift took place on the American Independence Day — so the Samoans could celebrate July 4 twice. This one takes place at the stroke of midnight, so that two minutes after 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 29, it will be 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 31. The new time zone will put Samoa 3 hours ahead of eastern Australia rather than 21 hours behind it, and 22 hours ahead of California, instead of 2 hours behind it.

The prime minister of Samoa, Tuila’epa Sailele Malielegaoi, acknowledged the new distance from the American orbit but said the move would make it much easier to do business with Australia and New Zealand, whose economies are linked increasingly with the rest of Asia, particularly China.

“In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we’re losing out on two working days a week,” Mr. Tuila’epa said. “While it’s Friday here, it’s Saturday in New Zealand, and when we’re at church on Sunday, they’re already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane.”

“Today,” the statement said bluntly, “we do a lot more business with New Zealand and Australia, China and Pacific Rim countries such as Singapore.”

Two years ago Samoa took a step to align itself with Australia and New Zealand, putting drivers on the left side of the road rather than the right. The prime minister said the change would make it easier for Samoans in those neighboring nations to send used cars home to their relatives.

Shifting time by decree is not a new phenomenon in the Pacific. At the recent turn of the century, in a bid to be the first to greet the dawn in what was called the new millennium, Pacific island nations engaged in a free-for all of shifting time zones, date lines and daylight saving times.

The date line, created at an international convention in 1884, is an imaginary line drawn roughly north to south along the 180-degree meridian, zigging and zagging here and there to accommodate the needs and demands of the nations along its route.

Moving westward across the date line, a traveler loses a day, moving to a point where it is 24 hours later. Moving eastward, a day is gained.

As the year 2000 approached, the island nation of Kiribati (32 atolls and one coral island) unilaterally extended the date line in a 1,000-mile loop to embrace its easternmost outcropping, Caroline Island. Tonga and Fiji introduced daylight saving time to move their clocks an hour ahead.

“There seems to be no legal reason why any country cannot declare itself to be in whatever time zone it likes,” said the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, the international arbiter of official time, in a premillennium statement.

The Samoan prime minister insisted that this week’s hop across the date line was prompted solely by economic realities and that it had nothing to do with a bid to be the first place in the world to greet the new year in 2012.

American Samoa, less than 100 miles to the east of Samoa, is not making the switch.

薩摩亞向錢看 12月30日變不見了

南太平洋島國薩摩亞和鄰近的托克勞群島從29日午夜起，把國際換日線從該國西方移到東方，也就是把時間撥快24小時，跳過30日，直接進入31日。

國際換日線通過太平洋中央，大致沿經度180度線，由於沒有任何國際組織強制畫線，太平洋國家可依各國喜好把換日線畫成鋸齒狀。

119年前，薩摩亞為了與美國加州做生意，把換日線畫在該國的西方，成為全球每天最晚結束的國家之一，與鄰近的美國夏威夷僅有1小時時差，與加州舊金山有3小時時差。

但如今薩摩亞主要貿易夥伴已從歐美換成紐澳、中國大陸和環太平洋國家，若不調整時區，薩摩亞比鄰近的紐西蘭晚23小時，比澳洲東部晚21小時。

薩國政府在今年6月通過法令，調整國際換日線位置。根據政府規定，由於調整過程中消失了30日這一天，原本預訂在30日工作的勞工，可不勞而獲，得到完整的1日薪資。

與薩摩亞同時調整時區的還有由三座環狀珊瑚礁島組成的托克勞群島，這是由紐西蘭管理的非自治領土，人口僅1500人。

薩摩亞有18萬6000人，原本以欣賞地球最晚的夕陽吸引觀光客，更換時區後，這個賣點沒了。但有新賣點：由於緊鄰的美屬薩摩亞時區仍與加州相近，但比薩摩亞晚一天，因此觀光客到薩摩亞慶祝特別的日子，可以在同一「天」慶祝兩次。

更改換日線有前例，太平洋島國吉里巴斯在1995年更改換日線，以避免國內不同地區落在不同時區。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/world/asia/samoa-to-skip-friday-and-switch-time-zones.html

2011-12-30．聯合報．A20．國際．編譯馮克芸