Which Country Borders the Most Countries? China and Russia, With 14 Each
China and Russia share the record for land neighbors, with 14 each. Here is who those neighbors are, how Brazil reaches 10, and why the counting rules change the answer.
China and Russia share the record: each has a land border with 14 countries, according to Guinness World Records. In the Americas, Brazil leads with 10 neighbors, a count that includes French Guiana, which belongs to France. These figures cover land borders between widely recognized states; change the rules and the ranking changes too.
Who are China's and Russia's 14 neighbors?
The two lists overlap more than you might expect. Besides bordering each other, China and Russia share three neighbors: Kazakhstan, Mongolia and North Korea. The rest fan out in opposite directions, with China facing South and Central Asia and Russia facing Europe and the Caucasus.
| Country | Land neighbors | Which ones |
|---|---|---|
| China | 14 | Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam |
| Russia | 14 | Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland and Ukraine |
| Brazil | 10 | Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, France (French Guiana), Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela |
China's neighbors range from giants such as India and Russia to small Himalayan countries such as Bhutan and Nepal. Russia's stretch from Norway in the Arctic to North Korea on the Pacific, which says a lot about how wide the country is. That same east-west sweep comes up in the question of which country has the most time zones.
Why did China once have 15 neighbors?
The tie is fairly recent. Hong Kong, a former British territory, returned to China in 1997, and Macau, run by Portugal, followed in 1999. After that, the lines separating them from mainland China stopped being borders between countries, although they keep many features of an international frontier, including checkpoints.
According to Guinness, China's total dropped from 15 to 14 on December 20, 1999, when Macau became a special administrative region. That is when Russia, with its 14 neighbors, drew level with China at the top of the list.
Does Brazil border 9 or 10 countries?
It depends on how you treat French Guiana. It is not an independent country but an overseas region of France and part of the French state. That is why many school books say Brazil borders 9 countries plus a French territory. Count France as a neighbor and the total is 10.
Brazil's national statistics agency, IBGE, lists all 10, French Guiana included, and puts the combined land border at about 17,300 km (roughly 10,700 miles). The longest stretch is with Bolivia, about 3,500 km (2,200 miles); the shortest is with Suriname, just over 640 km (400 miles). Only Chile and Ecuador, among South American countries, do not touch Brazil, and no other country in the Americas has as many neighbors.
Which counting rules change the answer?
Almost every list of this kind follows three unspoken rules: count only land borders, count only widely recognized states, and count each neighbor once, even if the border is broken up. Change any of them and the ranking shifts, sometimes by several places. These are the cases that come up most often when people compare lists from different sources.
- Exclaves: Russia touches Poland and Lithuania only through Kaliningrad, a piece of Russian territory cut off from the rest of the country. Without it, Russia's count would drop to 12.
- Overseas territories: European France does not reach South America, but French Guiana makes France a neighbor of Brazil and Suriname.
- Recognition: Russia recognizes Abkhazia and South Ossetia as countries, while most of the world considers them part of Georgia. By Russia's own count, it would have more neighbors.
- Sea borders: if maritime boundaries counted, countries with many islands and far-flung territories would gain neighbors across the water, and the list would look very different.
Behind all of this sits an even more basic question, how many countries there are in the world, which has no single answer either. Every list of neighbors inherits that choice.
Why China and Russia in particular?
Size helps, but it is not the whole story. Canada is huge and shares a land border only with the United States. What matters is position: China and Russia sit at the heart of Eurasia, the largest landmass on Earth, surrounded by many medium-sized and small countries. Brazil repeats the effect on a South American scale, since it covers nearly half the continent.
One odd detail completes Russia's tally: North Korea. The border between the two countries is tiny, just a few kilometers near the mouth of the Tumen River, yet it is enough to put Pyongyang on both record-holding lists.
