Which country has the most time zones?

The trick here is that a country's time zones are counted across all of its territory, not just the contiguous chunk on the map. France retains inhabited overseas departments and territories scattered across the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and South America, from Guadeloupe and Martinique to Réunion, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and French Guiana. Add them all up and the French Republic keeps official time in more separate zones than any other state. Russia, which is what most people guess, spans an enormous continuous width but its zones are consolidated and it stops short of the French total. The United States comes close once Alaska, Hawaii and its Pacific and Caribbean territories are included, but again falls short. China, despite being wide enough for several zones, deliberately runs the entire country on a single official time set to Beijing, which is why sunrise in the far west can come very late by the clock.

Because of that single national clock, western China's official noon can fall hours before the sun is actually overhead.