Semi protected edit request on 9 March 2014 Please change officially the Republic of China ROC Chinese pinyin Zh nghu M ngu is a state in East Asia to officially the Republic of China ROC Chinese pinyin Zh nghu M ngu is a country in East Asia also please change Neighboring states include the People s Republic of China to the west Japan to the east and northeast and the Philippines to the south to Neighboring countries include the People s Republic of China to the west Japan to the east and northeast and the Philippines to the south According to the mandarin original text in the Taiwan Wikipedia page Taiwan is a country and not a state Also people s republic of china Japan Philippines are not states they are countries see below 9 10 1912111971 11 2 67 121 104 204 I think you re confused in regards to the definition of state I see that you live in California United States which furthers my assumptions There is more to the word state than the US state e g Texas Missouri etc definition a sovereign state is a political entity that we call Canada or Serbia or Cambodia With this definition China Philippines and Japan are states The terms state nation and country refer to concepts which may be similar however still have their small distinctions In order to avoid ambiguity it s better to refer to objects such as China Japan Britain Russia the United States France et cetera as sovereign states instead of the two alternative terms A sovereign state is largely defined in modern contexts based on Westphalian sovereignty whilst the definitions of nation and country differ depending on various contexts I wouldn t put too much thought on what the Chinese Wikipedia says on this issue The Chinese language like all languages has its limitations in that there is no one to one correspondence with English political vocabulary The English words state nation and country are all translated as in Chinese as Chinese does not make such a distinction The Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of China is called nation the United Nations is called nation the United States Department of State is called state the Commonwealth of Independent States is called state and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is called country T C E