JAKARTA, Jan. 13-- Chinese experts confirmed on Tuesday the discovery and lift of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) from beneath the wreckage of an AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea last month, said an official from the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia.

The experts told Xinhua in a phone call that the CVR has been lifted from sea at around 7:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday.

Three experts from the Civil Aviation Administration of China arrived in Indonesia on Jan. 6, joining the multinational hunt for the AirAsia flight QZ8501 which vanished from radar screens less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Indonesia's second- biggest city of Surabaya to Singapore on Dec. 28.

The experts have brought with them portable detection equipment including the side-scan sonar.

During the search process, they have detected ping signals suspected from the black boxes several times, according to the Ministry of Transport of China.