No
the current record is 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) done by Bathyscaphe Trieste. Swiss design and Italian built submersible
Bathyscaphe Trieste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You are wrong to compare apples with oranges. The Trieste was merely an "underwater water balloon" (see article below). The Trieste could not navigate along the ocean's bottom. Jiaolong is attempting a world record for a navigable submersible.
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China races to the bottom of the ocean - Telegraph
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China races to the bottom of the ocean
By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai
6:00PM BST 15 Jul 2011
China has launched a major new mission to explore the deep seas, building the only manned submersible in the world capable of navigating the ocean floor at 7,000m (23,000ft) below sea level.
Jiaolong submarine
Over the weekend, the 26ft-long Jiaolong submersible, named after a shape-shifting water dragon from Chinese mythology, will attempt to dive to 5,000m (16,404ft) in the Pacific Ocean to the south east of Hawaii.
If it succeeds, the titanium-hulled vessel will attempt to become the world's current deepest-diving submersible by dropping to 7,000m below sea level.
The craft's three crew members, Tang Jialing, Fu Wentao and Ye Cong, have trained for years for the dive, even taking a series of dives in Alvin, the American deep sea submersible, in 2005.
The only expedition which has ever gone deeper was the dive of the Trieste bathyscaphe in 1960, a 7ft-wide sphere with 5-inch thick steel walls that dropped to the bottom of Challenger Deep, the lowest point of the Pacific's Mariana trench. The Trieste was unable however to navigate on the bottom.
The Trieste, which resembled an underwater hot-air balloon, took Jacques Piccard, the son of its inventor, and Don Walsh, a US naval officer, to 10,916m (35,814ft) below the surface, despite one of its outer window panes cracking under pressure. The men reported back that they had spotted soles and flounders flapping in the ooze at the bottom.
The Jiaolong would "take the international community by surprise", according to Li Haiqing, a spokesman for China's State Oceanic Administration. All the details about its 47-day mission, however, have been classified as state secrets.
Another sign of China's growing scientific ambition, the Jiaolong was conceived as part of the 863 programme, a well-funded national high-technology plan that also helped to build China's Shenzhou spacecraft.
While the Jiaolong's current mission is purely scientific, the Chinese government is hoping its new ability to explore the deep will put it in prime position to explore and extract vast deposits of metals, including gold, copper and zinc, that lie in the sea bed.
China has already signed a deal with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to map an area of 30,000 sq miles of the Pacific, according to Jin Jiancai, secretary general of the China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development department.
"With permits from the ISA, China will be able to explore minerals and other resources for commercial purposes in this area once the technology matures," Mr Jin said. The ISA regulates mining in international waters and is currently considering applications to hunt for minerals from China and Russia as well as Nauru and Tonga, which are sponsoring private mining companies.
Wang Pinxian, the head of the State Laboratory of Marine Geology at Tongji university, said China's limited natural resources, and its thirst for everything from oil to copper to coal, had led it to start considering ocean mining. "One project, a gas exploration mission in the South China Sea has already been decided," he said.
The Jiaolong has already dived to more than 3,600m in the South China Sea last year, where it planted a small Chinese flag in the sea bed with a robotic arm, despite territorial disputes between China and other South East Asian countries over who has sovereignty over the waters."
A Chinese submersible -- a small submarine that relies on a support vessel -- places the national flag on the seafloor in the South China Sea on June 29, 2010. According to the New York Times, this mission signaled Beijing's intention to take regional lead in exploring remote and inaccessible parts of the ocean floor, which are rich in oil, minerals and other resources.
The submersible -- named
Jiaolong, after a mythical sea dragon -- has successfully reached 3,759 meters beneath sea level during a manned test. It is designed to dive to a depth of 7,000 meters. (Photo credit: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images. Caption credit:
Foreign Policy editorial researcher Philip Walker.)
