Wikipedia
Sansha is a prefecture-level city of Hainan province of the People's Republic of China. It administers (actually or nominally) several island groups and undersea atolls in the South China Sea including the Spratly Islands, the Paracel Islands and the Macclesfield Bank, and a number of other ungrouped maritime features. The entire territory is disputed, and the PRC's de facto control over the area varies.
Sansha has equal administrative status to a prefecture-level city, and was created on 24 July 2012. The establishment of Sansha is simply an upgrade of the administrative status of these island groups from the previous county-level Administrative Office, and construction of a city is not actually underway. However, a garrison may be established.
Foreign reaction to the declaration was not positive. The United States Department of State called the change in the administrative status of the territory " unilateral", and the move has received criticism from nations engaged in the South China Sea dispute, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam.
The centre of government for Sansha is located on Woody Island (Yongxing Dao) in the Paracels, where about 1,000 Chinese (PRC) reside. With a land area of 210ha, Woody Island is the largest contiguous land area in the South China Sea. The total land area of Sansha, which includes the islands in the Paracel and Spratly groups, is less than . Nationally, Sansha is the smallest prefecture-level city, by both population and land area, but the largest by total area, and is also the southernmost prefecture-level city of the PRC.
On 16 February 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that the Chinese had deployed HQ‑9 surface‑to‑air missiles on the island.