Territorial Dispute: There are on-going territorial disputes in the entire area covered by the town, whose administrative authority is not internationally recognized.
The Zhongsha Islands is a Chinese term for a collection of two skerries, many entirely submerged banks, seamounts, and shoals in the South China Sea. There are no islands in the Macclesfield Bank, the main part of Zhongsha. The Scarborough Shoal, which consists of two skerries, is not contiguous with the Macclesfield Bank but Chinese sources treat them as one chain of geographical features. The whole of the region is claimed by both the PRC and the ROC, and various bits of the eastern parts are claimed by the Philippines. No country has constant control of the whole region, and there are disputes - for example, see the Scarborough Shoal standoff.
The PRC claims to administer the area as Zhongsha Daojiao Town(中沙岛礁镇), a town under the Xisha District of the Sanshaprefecture-level city in Hainan. It has one Village-level division, “Zhongsha Daojiao Residential Community”. However, the seat of this town and residential community is not within the Zhongsha Islets, but in Yongxing Town.
Aquaculture research has been conducted on Walker Shoal(the shoal is known as manbu ansha in chinese).[1]
