China

China’s submerged-cave potential follows the South China Karst through Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and neighbouring provinces. Du’an is the most concentrated centre, but the important unit is the regional aquifer rather than any single spring.

China’s modern cave-diving culture evolved quickly from international collaboration into domestic exploration, training, standardized line projects, deep CCR capability and specialist public-safety rescue.

Du’an Yao Autonomous County became the international face of Chinese cave diving in the early 2010s. Official material describes the Disu underground river as a 241 km network with twelve tributaries and more than 300 karst windows.

French explorers including Jean Bottazzi, Sébastien Lissarrague and Pierre-Éric Deseigne helped reveal the region internationally. A technical dive centre and logistics infrastructure appeared while the caves were still being discovered, creating a rare overlap of virgin exploration and organized diving development.

Daxing is one of Du’an’s defining resurgences. A French push reached about 121 m in 2012 and 2014 work extended the south gallery to roughly 151 m. Chen Qian later pushed the cave to the 258 m class.

Seasonal water-level change can alter the absolute depth, flow and point of entry. Project accounts also show that post-2023 permission became a major constraint, so historical deep exploration must not be read as current open access.

After Daxing access could not be secured, Chen Qian redirected a 2024 project with Craig Challen and Andrew Oakeley to Shenglong. Chen Qian and Challen each reached 252 m and repeatedly dived the system to establish its structure.

The team used a decompression habitat and exchanged techniques around dual-rebreather deep diving. The project illustrates a mature Chinese-led collaboration rather than foreign-led discovery.

WUD began organizing cave and deep-diving training in 2010 and developed a domestic technical curriculum covering cave, sidemount cave, deep, wreck, CCR and exploration pathways. Published Cave 1 standards include prerequisites, fitness benchmarks, a six-day / 48-hour course structure, a 30 m training-depth cap, team gas rules, guideline work and zero-visibility/lost-line/lost-diver drills.

Its standardization philosophy explicitly draws on Hogarthian/DIR ideas but has been adapted through years of Chinese cave use, including permanent-line projects and the 2020 Gold Line Project.

China’s core cave identity is natural karst. Fangshan marble quarry near Beijing is a rare documented flooded-quarry/artificial-overhead example and requires current access verification. Panjiakou’s reservoir-flooded Great Wall is significant underwater heritage but should remain classified as open-water heritage unless a specific enclosed penetration is documented.

China’s huge mining industry does not by itself establish a legitimate national flooded-mine-diving culture.

Du’an’s karst windows are village water sources and cultural places as well as dive entries. WUD projects explicitly connect cave survey with freshwater protection, biology and water-quality work. Local belief and community use can make a physically diveable spring socially inappropriate to enter without agreement.

Jiudun and Daxing access must be treated as dynamic. Project rules, local authorities, geopark status, village relationships and post-accident restrictions can all override older dive reports.

World Underwater Discovery (WUD) — organisation history, cave-training structure, GXKSP, Jiudun/Daxing/Shenglong/Lükutan project archives and 2014 accident report; China Daily and official Guangxi media — Disu/Du’an and Han Ting reporting; InDEPTH / X-Ray Mag / Advanced Diver — Du’an and Shenglong project context; People’s Daily / Xinhua / Guangming Daily — 2025 survival rescues; Beijing municipal sources — Fangshan karst protection; PADI — Panjiakou heritage-dive context.

Publication rule: do not reduce China to depth records. Preserve the regional aquifer, domestic training/rescue culture, community water use and fast-changing access. Date deep figures, separate lakes from caves and open-water heritage from overhead, and never infer a mine-diving industry from mining scale alone.