You could use "it" as a non gendered pronoun. But you don't have to. "it" is considered impolite, something you don't use for something you treasure. Furthermo

You could use "it" as a non gendered pronoun. But you don't have to. "it" is considered impolite, something you don't use for something you treasure. Furthermore English has a perfectly long history of referring to countries as shes. This has fallen in disuse in the past 50 years as we've gotten fussy about the sexes. But it is certainly not incorrect or foreign to English.