The Royal Thai Embassy in Beijing received the information from the Huanqiu news agency, which carried out a survey of netizens last year.

In a letter of congratulations from the agency to the Thai Embassy in Beijing, it was disclosed that around 200,000 online voters had chosen Thailand as one of the countries that Chinese people wanted to be neighbouring country.

Most comments reasoned that Thailand was friendly to Chinese people, had political stability, and had common interests with China.

The six other most popular countries out of 36 on the list were Sweden, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore, the Maldives and Norway. It was noted that all selected seven countries were the favourite destinations for Chinese tourists.

Huanqiu carried out the survey on its website between December 2015 and January 2016.