For a big geographic area like Europe, the best you can do is make it so that on average for the population solar noon is around 12pm. Some people in the east will get solar noon before their clocks say it's 12pm, people in the west will get it after the clocks say it's 12pm, but on average, solar noon is at noon.

China has an even stranger situation. It's a huge country that uses one time zone. They've set it so that for the majority of people / most important cities, noon is at noon. But, that means that some people in the far west of China have clocks saying it's noon long before the sun gets to its peak. But, that might be a reasonable compromise to have everybody in the country on the same clock. What would be dumb is to have everybody in the country on the same clock, then say that for the majority of people solar noon is when the clocks say 3pm.