National Time Service Center


The National Time Service Center is a public institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, responsible for generating, maintaining, and broadcasting standard time in China. It is located in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. Its predecessor was the Shaanxi Astronomy Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which was established in 1966 and renamed the National Time Service Center in March 2001. The center is China's only statutory agency for issuing national standard time and frequency.
NTSC includes short-wave and long-wave standard time and frequency radio stations. And in 2007, low-frequency time signal station began trial broadcasting from Shangqiu.
In October 2025, China's national security authorities released the technical investigation report on the series of major cyber attacks carried out by the National Security Agency of the United States against the National Time Service Center from March 2022 to July 2024.