Steven Schwankert

Steven Schwankert is a maritime historian and award-winning writer with more than 20 years of experience in China. His book about China’s worst maritime disaster, ,Jiangya: China’s Titanic, will be published in December 2020. His most recent work, Poseidon: China’s Secret Salvage of Britain’s Lost Submarine, was published by Hong Kong University Press in 2013, and was the basis for an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Steven is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the Explorers Club, where he is East and Southeast Asia Chapter Chair. He was the founder of SinoScuba (2003-2019), the first professional scuba diving operation in Beijing. In 2007, he led the first ever scientific expedition to dive Lake Khovsgol in Mongolia, where he and his team uncovered two wooden shipwrecks from the early 20th century. Steven’s work has been published in global publications including the Asian Wall St Journal, South China Morning Post, Billboard, and Variety. It has also appeared on websites for the New York Times, the Washington Post, PC World, and MacWorld. He is former deputy Asia editor of the Hollywood Reporter, former editor of Computerworld HongKong, and former managing editor of asia.internet.com. He is an alumnus of the Asian Languages department of the University of Massachusetts at Amhurst, and received his Master’s in journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995. Steven lives and works in Beijing, China.