China deploys submarine to survey sunken Ming Dynasty porcelain

China has begun a year-long project to survey a newly discovered shipwreck site in the disputed South China Sea in a further attempt to cement its sovereignty claims over the maritime region.

At a press conference held in the southern city of Sanya, the National Cultural Heritage Administration revealed that it had lowered a manned submarine on Saturday and established permanent underwater surveying points at the shipwreck site at the depth of 1,500m in the northwestern region of the South China Sea, where piles of porcelain ware were found last October.

The hundreds of thousands of pieces have been dated to 1506-21, during the Ming Dynasty, and the shipwreck is another piece of proof that the Chinese people of the time had traversed the South