A submarine of the Chinese navy’s North Sea Fleet prepares to dive into the sea. A Chinese submarine has conducted its first deep dive in the Indian Ocean in search of various kinds of metals, including gold, in a four-month-long mission. The submersible vessel called Jiaolong carried out its first dive on Friday to collect samples of hydrothermal fluid and sulfide, a kind of seabed deposit containing... 

Docking in progress, CCTV video still. China has reached two technological milestones spanning great depths and heights. In the earth’s orbit, the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft manually docked a space module while under the Pacific, a Jiaolong submersible dived to the bottom of the Marian Trench. The symbolism behind the scheduling of the two historical events was far from coincidental. The three oceanographers...