Macau 🇲🇴

Macau belongs to Eastern Asia, and it is a dependent territory rather than a country in the political sense. In formal use it is Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. No capital is recorded for it — there is no permanent seat of government to name.

By land area it covers 30 km², which ranks it 241st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Sint Maarten and just ahead of Tuvalu. That makes it around a quarter larger than Tuvalu.

Around 687,000 people live there, placing it 167th of 249 by population — between Bhutan above it and Luxembourg below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 8th of 8 in size and 8th in population.

Macau does not hold a United Nations seat of its own. It is administered as a dependency or overseas territory rather than as a sovereign state, which is why it sits outside the 192 member states while still appearing among the 249 entries on this site.

Not holding a UN seat is not the same as having no self-government, and the administrative details make that clear. Macau has 4 of the five markers of separate administration tracked on this page — its own currency, its own dialling code, its own internet domain and its own iso codes. In day-to-day terms it is run substantially as its own jurisdiction.

• Its own currencyMOP
• Its own dialling code+853
• Its own internet domain.mo
• Its own ISO codesmo / MAC
• A designated capitalnone listed

The coordinates the dataset gives are 22.2° N, 113.5° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,468 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Mexico, Oman and Cuba sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 1 neighbour: China.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked territory does not.

Density comes out at around 22,900 people per square kilometre, which makes it among the most densely populated places on earth. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Macanese, so residents are Macanese.

2 languages carry official status: Chinese and Portuguese. Chinese, the first listed, is shared with 4 other entries worldwide.

Inside Asia it places 48th of 50 by population, and it accounts for under 1% of everyone living in Eastern Asia.

The Macanese pataca (MOP) is used only in Macau among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. Portuguese is listed for 10 entries here, Macau among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Within Eastern Asia, Macau is the least populous of the 8 entries listed here, and 8th by area. Mongolia is the next step up. Being the smallest of a group is not the same as being small in absolute terms — the subregional context is what gives the figure meaning.

China is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇲🇳 Mongolia
• 🇨🇳 China

It uses the Macanese pataca (P, MOP). That currency appears nowhere else on this list.

The top-level domain is .mo. Calls from overseas start with +853. In ISO terms it is mo in two letters and MAC in three.

On the UN list it does not appear as a member. Its official name points to China as the administering state. Of the 249 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.