The Countries With the Most Neighbours, and the Strangest Borders on Earth
· 5 min read
Which country has the most neighbours?
China and Russia are tied, each bordering 14 countries. Brazil follows with 10, which is every South American country except Chile and Ecuador.
China borders Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam.
Russia borders Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland and Ukraine. The Lithuania and Poland borders belong to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic with no land connection to the rest of the country.
| Country | Land neighbours |
|---|---|
| China | 14 |
| Russia | 14 |
| Brazil | 10 |
| DR Congo | 9 |
| Germany | 9 |
| Austria | 8 |
| France | 8 |
| Serbia | 8 |
| Tanzania | 8 |
| Zambia | 8 |
France's count is higher than people expect because its overseas departments border Brazil and Suriname from French Guiana.
What is an enclave, and what is an exclave?
An enclave is a territory completely surrounded by another country. An exclave is a piece of a country separated from its main body. A territory can be both, or just one.
Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave but not an enclave, because it borders two countries and the sea. Lesotho is an enclave, entirely surrounded by South Africa, but not an exclave, because it is a whole country.
Three countries are complete enclaves: Lesotho, San Marino and Vatican City. Each is surrounded by exactly one other country.
Where is the most complicated border in the world?
The most tangled border is at Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau, on the Belgian-Dutch frontier. Baarle-Hertog is Belgian territory consisting of 22 separate parcels inside the Netherlands, and inside several of those Belgian parcels sit Dutch counter-enclaves — small pieces of the Netherlands surrounded by Belgium surrounded by the Netherlands.
The border runs through houses. It is marked in the pavement with crosses and metal studs, and front doors determine which country a building belongs to; some buildings have two house numbers. The arrangement descends from medieval land deals between the Duke of Brabant and the Lords of Breda and was only formally fixed in 1995.
Until 2015, the Indian-Bangladeshi border was even more complicated, with about 200 enclaves including a third-order enclave: a piece of India, inside Bangladesh, inside India, inside Bangladesh. The two countries resolved it with a land-boundary agreement that exchanged the enclaves and let residents choose their nationality.
What other borders are genuinely strange?
Point Roberts, Washington is part of the United States hanging below the 49th parallel at the tip of a Canadian peninsula. Reaching the rest of Washington state by road means crossing into Canada and back out. Its schoolchildren cross the border four times a day to attend secondary school.
Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec share a library and opera house built deliberately across the border. The audience sits in one country and watches a stage in another.
Märket, a small skerry in the Baltic, is split between Sweden and Finland along a line redrawn in 1985 to keep a Finnish lighthouse on Finnish soil while leaving each country the same area. The result is an S-shaped border on an island of about 3 hectares.
The Spanish-Moroccan border at Ceuta and Melilla gives the European Union two land frontiers in Africa.
Bir Tawil, between Egypt and Sudan, is one of very few habitable places on earth claimed by no country. Both states prefer the border interpretation that gives them the larger, more valuable Hala'ib Triangle instead, and neither can claim Bir Tawil without undermining that argument.
Why are so many African borders straight?
Many African borders are straight lines because they were drawn by European powers along lines of latitude and longitude, largely during the partition that followed the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, with little reference to the rivers, mountains or communities on the ground.
The consequence is visible on any map: long geometric edges through the Sahara, and a great many borders that split ethnic and linguistic groups between two or three states. It is also why African countries are disproportionately hard in a map quiz — a straight edge gives your memory nothing to grip.
See how many you can place in the Africa locate quiz, or try Europe where the enclaves live.
Put it into practice: try the world locate quiz or the flags quiz.