China sets up underwater relic protection zone for sunken battleships

JINAN, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in east China's Shandong Province have designated an additional 43,000 square meters of coastal waters as part of an underwater cultural relics protection zone to safeguard the long-lost remains of three sunken warships from the First Sino-Japanese War.

The Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism has released the precise coordinates of the protected waters on its official website, informing the public that the measures are intended to strengthen the preservation of underwater cultural relics from the First Sino-Japanese War.

Under the new protection measures, activities such as fishing, blasting and construction work that could jeopardize the safety of the underwater relics are prohibited.

Zhou Qiang, deputy director of the underwater archaeology research office at the Shandong Underwater Archaeological Research Center, said the three shipwreck sites lie close to one another, resting 4 to 6 meters underwater near Liugong Island in Weihai Bay.

The remains have been identified as those of the Dingyuan, Laiyuan and Jingyuan, all battleships of the Beiyang Fleet during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). No complete hulls survive; only scattered fragments of the ships remain.

The ships were destroyed during the First Sino-Japanese War, commonly known in China as the Jiawu War, which began on July 25, 1894, when Japanese warships attacked two Chinese vessels off the Korean port of Asan.

This year marks the 130th anniversary of the end of the war lasting from 1894 to 1895.

According to the Shandong archaeological research center, after the war, Japan carried out several destructive salvage operations on the sunken vessels of the Beiyang Fleet.

Chinese archaeological institutions conducted joint underwater investigations from 2017 to 2023, confirming the identities of the three sunken warships and salvaging over 4,000 cultural relics. These findings provide crucial physical evidence for the study of the war and the Beiyang Fleet. The artifacts are currently housed at the National Cultural Heritage Administration and the Chinese Museum of the Sino-Japanese War.

Zhou Chunshui, a researcher with the National Cultural Heritage Administration's archaeological research center, said the archaeological project related to the sunken warships was the largest, longest-running and most productive archaeological project of a naval battlefield anywhere in the world.

The national museum, dedicated to the Beiyang Fleet and the First Sino-Japanese War, is located on Liugong Island, which has been developed into a patriotic education base, as the war is regarded as "a bitter lesson to learn" in Chinese history. In October alone, the museum received 198,562 visitors.