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A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, states with limited recognition, constituent country, or a dependent territory. Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the United Nations. There is no universal agreement on the number of "countries" in the world since several states have disputed sovereignty status, limited recognition and a number of non-sovereign entities are commonly called countries.

The definition and usage of the word "country" are flexible and has changed over time. The Economist wrote in 2010 that "any attempt to find a clear definition of a country soon runs into a thicket of exceptions and anomalies."

Areas much smaller than a political entity may be referred to as a "country", such as the West Country in England, "big sky country" (used in various contexts of the American West), "coal country" (used to describe coal-mining regions), or simply "the country" (used to describe a rural area). The term "country" is also used as a qualifier descriptively, such as country music or country living. (Full article...)

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Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Covering an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) and with a population of 9.1 million, Belarus is the 13th-largest and the 20th-most populous country in Europe. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into six regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city; it is administered separately as a city with special status.

Between the medieval period and the 20th century, different states at various times controlled the lands of modern-day Belarus, including Kievan Rus', the Principality of Polotsk, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire. In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917, different states arose competing for legitimacy amid the Civil War, ultimately ending in the rise of the Byelorussian SSR, which became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. After the Polish-Soviet War, Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland. Much of the borders of Belarus took their modern shape in 1939, when some lands of the Second Polish Republic were reintegrated into it after the Soviet invasion of Poland, and were finalized after World War II. During World War II, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a quarter of its population and half of its economic resources. In 1945, the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union. The republic was home to a widespread and diverse anti-Nazi insurgent movement which dominated politics until well into the 1970s, overseeing Belarus' transformation from an agrarian to industrial economy. (Full article...)

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Australia Azerbaijan Bahrain Bulgaria Cameroon Canada Chad China Croatia England Germany Hong Kong India Japan Jordan Madagascar Madagascar Plan Malawi Malaysia Nauru New Zealand Philippines Rwanda Switzerland Turkey United States Wales

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ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states). The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various country-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Surface air temperature change over the past 50 years. (from Developing country)
Image 2
Landlocked countries
Doubly landlocked countries
(from Landlocked country)
Image 3
  Developed countries or cities
  Developing countries
  Least developed countries
  Data unavailable

The latest classifications sorted by the IMF and the UN (from Developing country)
Image 4Flags of the United Nations member and non-member GA observer states in front of the Palace of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (from List of sovereign states)
Image 5San Andrés and Providencia, Colombia (from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 6Percentage of people with undernutrition by country, World Food Program, 2020
  Under 2.5%
  2.5% – 5.0%
  5.0% – 14.9%
  15.0% – 24.9%
  25.0% – 34.9%
  Over 35.0%
  No data
(from Developing country)
Image 7World map representing Human Development Index categories (based on 2022 data, published in 2024)
- Very high
- High
- Medium
- Low
- No data
(from Developing country)
Image 8A formation of human chain at India Gate by the women from different walks of life at the launch of a National Campaign on prevention of violence against women, in New Delhi on 2 October 2009 (from Developing country)
Image 9Map of the Darién Gap at the border between Colombia and Panama (from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 10Plastic pollution at a beach near Accra, Ghana (from Developing country)
Image 11Newly industrialized countries (from Developing country)
Image 12World regions by total wealth (in trillions USD), 2018 (from Developing country)
Image 13Aves Island, Venezuela (from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 14Conventions used for the boundary between Asia and Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. The red line shows the most common modern convention, in use since c. 1850.
  Asia
  Europe
  historically placed in either continent
(from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 15A map of World Bank high-income economies in 2019; high-income economies are indicated in blue, while former high-income economies are shown in teal.
Image 16
  African land part of Egypt
  Asian land part of Egypt
  The rest of Africa
  The rest of Asia
(from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 17Comparison map: Greenland, the Faroe Islands (enlarged) and Denmark differ significantly in size. The Danish Realm is spread across the North Atlantic Ocean and North Sea. (from List of transcontinental countries)
Image 18
  Least developed economies according to ECOSOC
  Least developed economies out of scope of the ECOSOC
  Graduated to developing economy

(from Developing country)
Image 19Solar cookers use sunlight as energy source for outdoor cooking. (from Developing country)
Image 20Factory in China at Yangtze River causing air pollution (from Developing country)
Image 21Percentage of women older than 14 who have experienced violence by an intimate partner (from Developing country)
Image 22Map of countries and territories by fertility rate as of 2020 (from Developing country)

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... that the library of Raphael de Mercatellis was the first library in the Low Countries to "reveal an extensive interest in what we may call Renaissance ideas"?

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The Dominican Republic is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north. Geographically, the Dominican Republic is part of the North American continent. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with Haiti, making Hispaniola one of only two Caribbean islands, along with Saint Martin, that is shared by two sovereign states. It is the second-largest nation in the Antilles by area (after Cuba) at 48,671 square kilometers (18,792 sq mi), and second-largest by population, with approximately 11.4 million people in 2024, of whom approximately 3.6 million live in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo, the capital city.

The native Taíno people had inhabited Hispaniola before the arrival of Europeans, dividing it into five chiefdoms. Christopher Columbus explored and claimed the island for Castile, landing there on his first voyage in 1492. The colony of Santo Domingo became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas and the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World. In 1697, Spain recognized French dominion over the western third of the island, which became the independent state of Haiti in 1804. A group of Dominicans deposed the Spanish governor and declared independence from Spain in November 1821, but were annexed by Haiti in February 1822. Independence came 22 years later in 1844, after victory in the Dominican War of Independence. Over the next 72 years, the Dominican Republic experienced several civil wars, failed invasions by Haiti, and a brief return to Spanish colonial status, before permanently ousting the Spanish during the Dominican War of Restoration of 1863–1865. The U.S. occupied the Dominican Republic (1916–1924) due to threats of defaulting on foreign debts; a subsequent calm and prosperous six-year period under Horacio Vásquez followed. From 1930 the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo ruled until his assassination in 1961. Juan Bosch was elected president in 1962 but was deposed in a military coup in 1963. A civil war in 1965, the country's last, was ended by U.S. military intervention and was followed by the authoritarian rule of Joaquín Balaguer (1966–1978 and 1986–1996). Since 1978, the Dominican Republic has moved toward representative democracy. (Full article...)

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This following country-related article is a most visited articles of WikiProject Countries, See complete list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Popular pages.

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The United States of America (USA or U.S.A.), commonly known as the United States (US or U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federation of 50 states, a federal capital district (Washington, D.C.), and 326 Indian reservations. Outside the union of states, it asserts sovereignty over five major unincorporated island territories and various uninhabited islands. The country has the world's third-largest land area, second-largest exclusive economic zone, and third-largest population, exceeding 334 million.

Paleo-Indians migrated across the Bering land bridge more than 12,000 years ago. British colonization led to the first settlement of the Thirteen Colonies in Virginia in 1607. Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and political representation sparked the American Revolution, with the Second Continental Congress formally declaring independence on July 4, 1776. Following its victory in the Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the country continued to expand across North America. As more states were admitted, sectional division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought the remaining states of the Union during the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished nationally. By 1890, the United States had established itself as a great power. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. The aftermath of the war left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War, during which both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance and international influence. Following the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the U.S. emerged as the world's sole superpower.

The U.S. national government is a presidential constitutional republic and liberal democracy with three separate branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. It has a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives, a lower house based on population; and the Senate, an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Substantial autonomy is given to states and several territories, with a political culture that emphasizes liberty, equality under the law, individualism, and limited government. (Full article...)
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Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), also known by its Western-given name Persia, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the northwest and Iraq to the west, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a mostly Persian-ethnic population of almost 90 million in an area of 1,648,195 km² (636,372 sq mi), Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population. It is the sixth-largest country entirely in Asia, the second-largest in West Asia, and one of the world's most mountainous countries. Officially an Islamic republic, Iran has a Muslim-majority population. The country is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. The nation's capital and most populous city is Tehran, with around 16.8 million people in its metropolitan area. Other major cities include Mashhad, Isfahan, Karaj, and Shiraz.

Iran has one of the longest histories of any country, beginning with the Elamites in the fourth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilization, it was first unified as a state by the Median ruler Deioces in the seventh century BC and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Empire, one of the largests in ancient history. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in the fourth century BC, subsequently dividing Iran into several Hellenistic states. An Iranian rebellion established the Parthian Empire in the third century BC and liberated the country, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire the third century AD. Ancient Iran saw some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, religion and central government. Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century AD, leading to Iran's Islamization. The blossoming literature, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and art became major elements for Iranian civilization during the Islamic Golden Age. A series of native Iranian Muslim dynasties ended the Arab rule over Iran, revived the Persian language and ruled the country until the Seljuk and Mongol conquests of the 11th to 14th centuries. In the 16th century, the native Safavids re-established a unified Iranian state with Twelver Shia Islam as the official religion, marking the beginning of modern Iranian history.

During the Afsharid Empire in the 18th century, Iran was a leading world power, though by the 19th century, it had lost significant territory through a series of conflicts with the Russian Empire. The early 20th century saw the Persian Constitutional Revolution and the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty. Attempts by Mohammad Mosaddegh to nationalize the country's vast fossil fuel supply led to an Anglo-American coup in 1953. After the Iranian Revolution, the monarchy was overthrown in 1979 and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established by The Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the country's first Supreme Leader. The forces of Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980, initiating the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq War. Iran is officially governed as an Islamic Republic with a Presidential system, with ultimate authority vested in a Supreme Leader, currently Ali Khamenei since Khomeini's death in 1989. The Iranian government is authoritarian and has attracted widespread criticism for its significant violations of human rights and civil liberties. (Full article...)
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India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country as of June 2023; and from the time of its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia.

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago.
Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE.
By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. Its evidence today is found in the hymns of the Rigveda. Preserved by an oral tradition that was resolutely vigilant, the Rigveda records the dawning of Hinduism in India. The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions.
By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism,
and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.
Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin.
Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity, but also marked by the declining status of women, and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian-languages scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

In the early medieval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts.
Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains,
eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate, and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of medieval Islam.
In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India.
In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion.
The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace,
leaving a legacy of luminous architecture.
Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy, but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and the public life took root. A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule. In 1947 the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority Dominion of India and a Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration. (Full article...)
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, the Red Sea to the south, Egypt to the southwest, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest. Tel Aviv is the country's financial, economic, and technological center. Israel's governmental seat is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although recognition of Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is limited internationally.

Israel is located in a region known historically as Canaan, Palestine, and the Holy Land. In antiquity, it was home to several Canaanite city-states, and later, Israelite and Judahite kingdoms, and is referred to as the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Situated at a continental crossroad, the region subsequently came under the rule of many different empires. The late 19th century saw the rise of Zionism in Europe, a movement seeking a Jewish homeland, amid rising antisemitism in Europe, which garnered British support during World War I. During the war, British occupation led to the creation of Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Increased Jewish immigration, combined with British colonial policy, led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs. The 1947 UN Partition Plan triggered a civil war between the two groups.

The State of Israel declared its establishment on 14 May 1948, the eve of the British termination of the Mandate. On 15 May 1948, the armies of neighboring Arab states invaded the area of former Mandatory Palestine, starting the First Arab–Israeli War. The war saw the expulsion and flight of most of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population, known as the Nakba. A minority remained and became Arab citizens of Israel. Also, primarily as a consequence of the war, there was an influx of Jews, previously living in the North Africa and the Middle East, who were expelled or fled, beginning a near total exodus of Jews living in the Muslim world. The 1949 Armistice Agreements established Israel's borders over most of the former Mandate territory. The rest, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were taken by Jordan and Egypt respectively. As happened during the war, in the following years, Israel received many European Jews displaced by the Holocaust or the Second World War. The 1967 Six-Day War saw Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Syrian Golan Heights. The Israeli government has since established and continues to expand settlements across the occupied territories, actions which are deemed illegal under international law, and has annexed both East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, actions which are largely unrecognized internationally. Since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt, returning the Sinai Peninsula, and with Jordan, and has more recently normalized relations with several Arab countries. However, international efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not succeeded. Israel's practices in its occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn sustained international criticism. It has been accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people by human rights organizations and United Nations officials. (Full article...)
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,354 square miles (244,376 km²), with an estimated population of nearly 67.6 million people in 2022.

In 1707, the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present name, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The UK became the first industrialised country and was the world's foremost power for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the "Pax Britannica" between 1815 and 1914. At its height in the 1920s, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the world's landmass and population, and was the largest empire in history. However, its involvement in the First World War and the Second World War damaged Britain's economic power and a global wave of decolonisation led to the independence of most British colonies. British influence can be observed in the legal and political systems of many of its former colonies, and British culture remains globally influential, particularly in language, literature, music and sport. English is the world's most widely spoken language and the third-most spoken native language. (Full article...)
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Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. Russia is a highly urbanized country including 16 population centers with over a million inhabitants. Its capital as well as its largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's second-largest city and its cultural capital.

The East Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire. Rus' ultimately disintegrated, with the Grand Duchy of Moscow growing to become the Tsardom of Russia. By the early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. At the expense of millions of lives, the Soviet Union underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for global ideological influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first human expedition into outer space.

In 1991, the Russian SFSR emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the independent Russian Federation. A new constitution was adopted, which established a federal semi-presidential system. Since the turn of the century, Russia's political system has been dominated by Vladimir Putin, under whom the country has experienced democratic backsliding and a shift towards authoritarianism. Russia has been militarily involved in a number of conflicts in former Soviet states and other countries, including its war with Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014 from neighbouring Ukraine, followed by the further annexation of four other regions in 2022 during an ongoing invasion. (Full article...)
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China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the world's second-most populous country after India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land. With an area of nearly 9.6 million square kilometers (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the third-largest country by total land area. The country is divided into 33 province-level divisions: 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two semi-autonomous special administrative regions. Beijing is the national capital, while Shanghai is its most populous city by urban area and largest financial center along with Chongqing as the largest city proper in the world.

One of the cradles of civilization, China has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era, with the earliest dynasties emerging in the Yellow River basin before the late second millennium BCE. The eighth to third centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature, philosophy, and historiography. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor for the first time. Appointed non-hereditary officials began ruling counties instead of the aristocracy, ushering in more than two millennia of imperial dynasties including the Qin, Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the building of the Great Wall, Chinese culture—including languages, traditions, architecture, philosophy and technology—flourished and has heavily influenced East Asia and beyond. However, China began to cede parts of the country in the late 19th century to various European powers by a series of unequal treaties.

After decades of struggle, the monarchy was overthrown in 1912 and the Republic of China (ROC) was formed, although the country in the Beiyang era became unstable which resulted in the Warlord Era, that later concluded after the Kuomintang (KMT) reunified the country while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), purged after 1927, were fighting sporadically against the Nationalist government, with a brief truce as a united front when Japan began invading the country. Despite China's eventual victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War in general, numerous atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre left lasting effects on the country. After the war ended, it recovered the territories that Japan annexed but the second phase of the Chinese Civil War resumed shortly after, and by 1949, the CCP had established control on most of the territories of the country. As the KMT retreated to the island of Taiwan, the country was split with both sides claiming to be the sole legitimate government of China. After the land reforms, later attempts to realize communism failed—the Great Leap Forward led to a massive famine of millions of citizens, while the Cultural Revolution caused a chaotic period of persecution and zealous Maoist populism. In 1971, the PRC replaced the ROC as China's representation in the United Nations (UN). Following the Sino-Soviet split, the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972 marked the beginning of normalized relations with the United States. Economic reforms that began in 1978 led by reformists within the CCP moved the country away from a socialist planned economy toward an increasingly capitalist market economy, spurring significant economic growth, although liberal and democratic political reforms stalled after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. (Full article...)
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Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the four main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, and Kyushu. Tokyo is the country's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

The Japanese archipelago has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic (30,000 BC). Between the fourth and ninth centuries AD, the kingdoms of the region became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō), and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution, and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution.

Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet. Japan is a highly developed country and a great power, with one of the largest economies by nominal GDP. Japan has renounced its right to declare war, though it maintains a self-defense force that ranks as one of the world's strongest militaries. A global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, the country has made significant contributions to science and technology, and is one of the world's largest exporters and importers. It is part of multiple major international and intergovernmental institutions. Japan has over 125 million inhabitants and is the 11th most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its highly urbanized population on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. Japan has one of the world's longest life expectancies but is experiencing a population decline due to its very low birth rate. (Full article...)
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Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia.
It is located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands with a combined area of 36,193 square kilometres (13,974 square miles). The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, has an area of 35,808 square kilometres (13,826 square miles), with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.

Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago. In the 17th century, large-scale Han Chinese immigration began under a Dutch colony and continued under the Kingdom of Tungning, the first predominantly Han Chinese state in Taiwanese history. The island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty of China and ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895. The Republic of China, which had overthrown the Qing in 1912, took control following the surrender of Japan in 1945. Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan in 1952. The immediate resumption of the Chinese Civil War resulted in the loss of the Chinese mainland to Communist forces, who established the People's Republic of China, and the flight of the ROC central government to Taiwan in 1949. The effective jurisdiction of the ROC has since been limited to Taiwan, Penghu, and smaller islands.

In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization called the "Taiwan Miracle". In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ROC transitioned from a one-party state under martial law to a multi-party democracy, with democratically elected presidents since 1996. Taiwan's export-oriented industrial economy is the 21st-largest in the world by nominal GDP and the 20th-largest by PPP measures, with a focus on steel, machinery, electronics, and chemicals manufacturing. Taiwan is a developed country. It is ranked highly in terms of civil liberties, healthcare, and human development. (Full article...)
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Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. Countries are sorted by nominal GDP estimates from financial and statistical institutions, which are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. Nominal GDP does not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currency. Such fluctuations may change a country's ranking from one year to the next, even though they often make little or no difference in the standard of living of its population.

Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made based on purchasing power parity (PPP), to adjust for differences in the cost of living in different countries. Other metrics, nominal GDP per capita and a corresponding GDP (PPP) per capita are used for comparing national standard of living. On the whole, PPP per capita figures are less spread than nominal GDP per capita figures.

The rankings of national economies over time have changed considerably; the United States surpassed the British Empire's output around 1916, which in turn had surpassed the Qing dynasty in aggregate output decades earlier. Since China's transition to a socialist market economy through controlled privatisation and deregulation, the country has seen its ranking increase from ninth in 1978, to second in 2010; China's economic growth accelerated during this period and its share of global nominal GDP surged from 2% in 1980 to 18% in 2021. Among others, India has also experienced an economic boom since the implementation of economic liberalisation in the early 1990s. (Full article...)