Chinese AK – The Most Controversial Kalashnikov Variant. Part 1 – The Soviet Assistance

[Zarvan]

Chinese AK – The Most Controversial Kalashnikov Variant. Part 1 – The Soviet Assistance​

Posted 6 days ago in AK-47 / AK-74 / Everything AK, Defense, Editorial, History, Rifles by Vladimir Onokoy with 43 Comments
Tags: ak, china, China didn't copy something, Guns from China, Kalashnikov

It is hard to find a place on Earth where people wouldn’t know what Kalashnikov is. Some know it through movies, some through video games, but a good portion of the world’s population have some firsthand experience with this rifle, since a Soviet, East European, or Chinese AK can be found almost anywhere.

Used by both rebels and police forces, AK rifles usually outlive regimes they serve and entire countries, changing owners and fighting for different causes and creeds, decade after decade.

But the majority of Kalashnikov rifles have nothing to do with their supposed country of origin – the Soviet Union. 34 countries produced AKs, and China, without a doubt, did the most to export those rifles to the far corners of the world left untouched by Soviet defense exports.

Charley Sheen in the ending of “Platoon” with an early Type 56 with a milled receiver. Photograph: Cinetext/MGM/Allstar

And among all AK variants, Chinese AKs have the most controversial reputation. Generally, people don’t expect much from a Chinese-made firearm. However, gun enthusiasts who managed to buy Polytechs and Legends that were available in the US in the late 80s and early 90s praise the quality of Chinese AKs.

But then again, those who encountered Chinese AKs in Africa and the Middle East during GWOT don’t seem to have much love for them. This controversy always amazed me.

It took me years of armorer work and research in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Pakistan to understand why these guns deserved such a controversial reputation and why opinions about them are so polarized. But first, let’s see how it all began.

The secret diary of the Soviet engineer​

Author, firing a prototype of AK Type 3, the first generation of the AK rifle that was produced internationally

The first Chinese AK was based on the Soviet AK Type 3, which went into mass production in 1955. And on the same year, the blueprints of this gun began their journey to China and several communist satellite states in Eastern Europe.

Generally, very little is known about the beginning of AK production in China. Thankfully, my good friend, one of the top AK experts in the entire world, found declassified documents that shed light on that topic.

The documents contain the full report and personal diary that was written by the Soviet engineer Barinov. This gentleman lived and worked in China from January 6, 1956, to June 6, 1957, and was tasked with establishing the production of AK rifles in the small and remote town of Beian. Located in the boundless fields of Heilongjiang Province in North East China, near the border with the Soviet Union, the factory didn’t even have a name but had a number – factory 626, better known to gun collectors as factory 66.

Stamp of the factory 626 – number “66” inside the triangle

His description of the factory reads like an opening to a horror story about a cursed village in the middle of nowhere. According to his report: “the factory was located in the abandoned military barracks of the Japanese army” which occupied these territories just a few years before, during WW2.

The reconstruction of the factory was deemed impossible because “the soil was totally unsuitable for permanent buildings and also funds were insufficient”. As a result, “all brick buildings developed vertical cracks” and “the roofs were only held by wooden beams”.

In that grim environment, the Chinese, with some help from Soviet specialists, managed to launch one of the finest AK factories in the world. Many of the now collectible semi-automatic pre-ban AKs imported to the US before 1993 came from this place.

Early Chinese Type 56 AK captured by US forces in 1964

Before AKs, this plant used to manufacture PPS submachine guns and Tokarev pistols. The establishment of AK production began in late 1955 and by November 1956, the first 5000 were already built, with the first 1000 being assembled from imported Soviet spare parts.

Those rifles built from Soviet parts are easy to identify. In fact, I had a couple of those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unlike the standard Chinese AK that has an enclosed hooded front sight, the original Soviet front sight post was not enclosed.

A prime example of the early Chinese AK with the Soviet-made front sight post

The quality of early Chinese AKs​

In 1957, factory 626 was tasked with building 50,000 rifles. Those early Chinese AKs with milled receivers were of the nicest Kalashnikovs ever made. In my reports, I marked those with the letters “M.B.” which stands for “milled beauty”.

The quality of those rifles was officially recognized by US Army experts. Many of those rifles were shipped to North Vietnam and later captured by US troops and intelligence services.

In 1964, Springfield Armory conducted an “EXPLOITATION REPORT COMPARISON OF 7.62-MM ASSAULT RIFLES CHINESE COMMUNIST TYPE 56 AND SOVIET MODEL AK” for the US Army Foreign Science and Technology Center in Washington DC.

The title page of the Springfield Armory report

According to the report: “Both weapons indicated high-quality craftsmanship. The surface microfinish of the weapon components for both rifles is comparable to U.S. military standards”.

The Chinese AK rifles with milled receivers didn’t have their own designation. All Chinese Kalashnikovs with fixed stocks are called Type 56, underfolders are officially called Type 56-1, and rifles with side-folding stocks are called Type 56-2.

But keep in mind, the name Type 56 wasn’t just the name of the Chinese AK. It was also used for the Chinese copy of the Soviet SKS semi-automatic carbine and the copy of the belt-fed machine gun RPD.

Comrades parting ways​

Chinese soldier hitting a Soviet border guard with his early Type 56. Credit RIA Novosti.

In the early 60s, China and the Soviet Union had a substantial disagreement over who is a better communist, and all Soviet technical assistance to China stopped.

In 1969, the political disagreement led to a quick and bloody war between China and the Soviet Union, known as the Damansky island border conflict. It was the first, but not the last time when AK was used against the Soviets, who invented it and even taught their future mortal enemy how to make it.

So the next generation of Chinese AKs was developed without any Soviet assistance and had plenty of interesting and original features. Stay tuned for part two.

Vladimir Onokoy​

Vladimir Onokoy is a small arms subject matter expert and firearms instructor. Over the years he worked in 15 different countries as a security contractor, armorer, firearms industry sales representative, product manager, and consultant.
His articles were published in the Recoil magazine, Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defence Journal, and Silah Report, he also created several video series such as “Gun myths”, “Kalashnikov: around the world”, “Larry Vickers in Russia” and “Kalashnikov: evolution” that are available on YouTube.
► Email: machaksilver at gmail dot com.
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Chinese AKs – The Most Controversial Kalashnikov Variant. Part 2 – How Type 56 Took Over the World​

Posted 33 mins ago in AK-47 / AK-74 / Everything AK, Defense, Editorial, History, Rifles by Vladimir Onokoy with 1 Comment
Tags: ak, china, China didn't copy something, Kalashnikov, people's republic of china

In Part 1 of this article, I talked about early Chinese AKs and the humble beginnings of Kalashnikov rifle manufacturing in China. By 1956, China was building new factories and improving old ones with the help of Soviet engineers, and it seemed like nothing can break apart two great comrades – the Soviet Communist party and their Chinese counterparts. But while engineers were building factories in the middle of nowhere and Chinese workers were figuring out the intricacies of modern mass production, something else was happening far away from Chinese industry towns. Something that would change the course of history for the Chinese small arms industry.

Soviet propaganda poster: “Soviet-Chinese friendship is as strong as steel”. Apparently, it was more like pot metal.

In Moscow, in February 1956, during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR, Soviet leadership suddenly acknowledged something no one expected to hear. Apparently, GULAGs, hundreds of thousands of mass executions, millions of arrests, and mass torture – all the things that were carried out by Stalin and his comrades, weren’t exactly an essential part of the plan to build a better Communist society.

Stalin and his cult of personality were officially denounced by the Soviet communist party, and the new party line was distributed among all the left-wing parties of the world. Obviously, Chinese comrades couldn’t tolerate such a blatant betrayal of core Communist values and the relationship between the two countries collapsed.

From the early 60s, the Chinese small arms industry was on its own. Now, if they wanted to get Soviet technology, they had to steal and reverse-engineer it. Even when chairman Mao Zedong finally joined the ranks of good communists in 1976, the relations between the countries did not improve.

The First Chinese-designed AK variants​

Soviet AKM with stamped receiver

By 1959, Soviet factories were switching to stamped receivers on their AKs. Chinese weapon design engineers had to figure out the design themselves. As a result, the rivet pattern on the front of the receiver is different on Soviet and Chinese-made rifles.

Chinese type 56 with stamped receiver

The stamped Type 56 was a solid and durable rifle that was exported to the most remote and unwelcoming corners of the world. The Chinese AKs made for their own People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had hieroglyphs stamped on the right side of the receiver to mark the positions of the selector lever. The guns made for the export had markings L and D instead. “Full auto“ translates into 连/Lián (L), and “semi-auto” translates into 单/Dān (D).

Generally, Chinese AKs made for PLA had slightly better quality. I inspected hundreds of those guns in Afghanistan, they were issued to guards at one of the most important projects. Those rifles were truly a blessing for me in that country. The biggest challenge I faced as an armorer in Afghanistan was fake Pakistani-made AKs. Meaning that when you pick up a Russian AK in Kabul, there is a 50% chance that it is fake, and even if it is real, most probably, all of the internals were replaced with cheap locally made parts, so it is still gonna blow up in your hands when you attempt to fire it.

But when you pick up a Chinese AK, you don’t have that risk. Pakistani gunsmiths never attempted to copy Chinese guns, so when you see hieroglyphs on the receiver you know it is original.

The first Chinese “spiker” I encountered years ago was in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Another notable feature of this generation of Chinese AKs was the “spiker”. The idea was quite simple – Chinese weapon designers simply took a Chinese SKS bayonet mechanism and copy-pasted it on an AK with a wooden stock. Personally, I cannot attest to the effectiveness of this feature, but the bayonet sure looks intimidating.

In the early 80s, around 1983, semi-automatic Chinese AKs started to come to the US civilian market. There were many different importers, and if you want to know more, check out this excellent Chinese AK-47 Blog. It documents information about all the importers and all the different variants of Chinese AKs that were available in the US.

Chinese AK ad from the Shotgun News magazine, December 1987

Unfortunately, good times never last, and in 1994 the importation of Chinese AKs to the US stopped. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms accused Norinco, a Chinese exporter of shipping illegal guns to the country. Since then Chinese AKs became collectible and the prices are rising every year.

The Propagation of Chinese AKs​

There was one dimension of the Chinese AK export. They didn’t just sell the guns, they sold the technology. Several countries obtained the capability of domestic firearm manufacturing with China’s help.

The first recipient of China’s AK technology was Albania. After this country left the Warsaw Pact in 1968 and cut ties with the Soviet Union, the Albanian communist government had only one strong shoulder to lean on – China. And China didn’t disappoint. In just a few years, around 1974, Albania began production of Automatiku Shqiptar model 56, a copy of Chinese Type 56.

ASH-78 Albanian AK variant that the author encountered in Kabul

Production continued until the early 1990s. Following the collapse of the communist government and economic disaster, in 1997, many of those rifles were looted from the government arsenals and ended up in different corners of the world. I first encountered Albanian AKs in Afghanistan, and a few years later my friend and fellow TFB writer Miles had exactly the same encounter.

The practice of technology transfer continued and in the next few decades Sudan, Iran, and Algeria received the same technology package. But that is a story for another time.

At the end of the XX century, the world was changing. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the Cold War ended, which opened a lot of opportunities in the global firearms market. The Chinese adapted like nobody else, and Chinese AKs were at forefront of those changes, which I will talk about in Part 3 of this article.

Vladimir Onokoy​

Vladimir Onokoy is a small arms subject matter expert and firearms instructor. Over the years he worked in 15 different countries as a security contractor, armorer, firearms industry sales representative, product manager, and consultant.

His articles were published in the Recoil magazine, Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defence Journal, and Silah Report, he also created several video series such as “Gun myths”, “Kalashnikov: around the world”, “Larry Vickers in Russia” and “Kalashnikov: evolution” that are available on YouTube.
► Email: machaksilver at gmail dot com.
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https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog...alashnikov-variant-part-2-type-56-took-world/

@PanzerKiel @Tipu7 @Sulman Badshah @Kompromat @DESERT FIGHTER @RescueRanger @Irfan Baloch @Arsalan @Oscar

 

[One_Nation]

Where does 222 come from? It looks like ak-47 but has thinner bullets.

 

[cloud4000]

When the US sent weapons to its proxies during the Cold War, the assault weapon of choice was Chinese-built AK-47s.

 

[Zarvan]

Chinese AKs – The Most Controversial Kalashnikov Variant. Part 3 – Type 56-2 – Quantity Over Quality​

In Part 1 of this article, I wrote about the early days of AK production in China, Part 2 was dedicated to the “golden years” of Type 56 history when it was exported to the US and produced in multiple countries.

But the world changes. The fall of communism in Eastern Europe transformed the international arms market. Suddenly, massive stockpiles of AKs from former Warshaw Pact countries were available for dirt cheap. You could get a high-quality AK for almost nothing in many former communist states, so international customers had no reason to buy a Type 56 anymore.

The Chinese Army also wasn’t buying AKs anymore. Type 56 was replaced with Type 81 and later with QBZ-95 bullpup. So the remaining AK factories now worked purely for export.

An ad for the imported semi-automatic Chinese AK

On top of that, the US market that previously consumed up to 2 million firearms a year disappeared after the 1994 ban. It was a hard time for Chinese manufacturers, some of the factories, including factory 626 (better known as 66), which history I previously described, closed down forever.

By the late 90s, the situation somewhat stabilized. The wild days of the early 90s came to an end, AKs from Europe were still available for a few hundred bucks, but for some customers, the difference between a few hundred bucks and a hundred bucks was like a difference between life and death.

And Chinese manufacturers delivered exactly that. A functioning select-fire assault rifle for roughly a hundred bucks. The lowest price that I ever heard being quoted was $93 (ninety-three USD). And I know for a fact that in 2017, with the right credentials, you could get a batch of one hundred Type 56 rifles for $120 a piece directly from China.

In recent years, the overwhelming majority of Type 56 exported worldwide have folding stocks
If you know anything about manufacturing, you realize that this price is impossible to match. But the Chinese manufacturers somehow managed to produce rifles at the fraction of the price of their competitors. And as a side-effect of this amazing cost reduction, the quality of the newer type 56 suffered tremendously.

By that time, the primary Type 56 variant produced by Chinese factories was an improved Type-56-2. This variant has a relatively comfortable steel stock that folds to the right side. Within that stock, there is a pin you can push with a standard punch in order to retrieve the cleaning kit from the stock.

The “secret” maintenance kit inside the Type-56-2 stock

Not all rifles of this type are inherently bad. In the early days, a certain amount of side folders were imported into the US and had good reviews. In the late 90s, Type 56-2 simply became more prominent which coincided with the lowering of quality standards.

I will never forget my first introduction to the late Type 56 rifle. My team was participating in weapon trials, and one of our main competitors was a Chinese AK. The rifle was laying there on the firing line and I asked for permission to take it apart. Permission was granted, but on one condition – I should not mess it up, since this gun was our direct competition.

Type-56-2 at the trials

I carefully took it apart, and the second I removed the bolt from the bolt carrier the firing pin and retaining pins fell out. I was petrified, thinking that someone will accuse me of trying to break the gun and gain an unfair advantage in trials.

Thankfully no one noticed and I put the bolt back together and swore to myself to never touch a Chinese AK again. Well, based on this article you imagine how well this promise worked out for me…

The firing pin got stuck inside the folding stock mechanism

That same thing happened a few more times, in different countries. During the inspection, I started smacking Chinese AK bolts on the table during the inspection to make sure inertia wouldn’t move the retaining pin.

Once I was working on a rifle in Somalia and the firing pin that fell out got stuck inside the folding stock mechanism and blocked the bolt carrier, so you couldn’t even charge the gun. That issue can be easily fixed, but I never encountered it with rifles from other countries.
Another strange problem that I regularly encountered was the out-of-spec extractor spring. You can always feel that something is wrong with this spring, you just need to push the extractor and feel the resistance. When it happened for the first time, I disassembled the bolt I thought some other armorer years ago played a joke on me. The spring that I found inside the bolt was not a proper extractor spring and looked more like a ballpoint pen spring.

Right – standard AK extractor spring, left – out-of-spec Chinese spring

I replaced it, took some pictures, and haven’t thought much about it. But then again, I found the same problem, multiple times, on various late-production Chinese AKs both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So after all, it wasn’t the fault of an armorer with a wicked sense of humor, but a factory-installed spring that wasn’t even close to spec. Perhaps someone managed to save a lot of money for the factory with this little “improvement”.

But there were also problems I couldn’t solve easily. Many Chinese AKs have nonremovable front-sight posts, so you can really fix it with any conventional methods – by changing the retaining pins, for example.

Finally, there is an issue of accuracy and barrel condition. Compared to the early Chinese AKs, the modern Type 56 has a lesser-quality chrome lining that starts to peel off after a few hundred shots. Once in Iraqi Kurdistan, I tested the accuracy of newer Chinese AKs, and in the limited time that I had, even a Romanian AK with a wobbling folding stock always printed better group on paper.

According to my good friend, one of the most talented weapon design engineers I know, who spend years testing new production Chinese AKs, the manufacturers there days do not guarantee complete interchangeability of parts between the guns.

On top of that, soldiers who used those AKs in mountain warfare experienced a noticeable amount of stoppages when they shot uphill, elevating the barrels of their rifles. After years of issues, the country decided to replace their Chinese AKs with Kalashnikovs from a different manufacturer.

Note the wear of the finish – just from the trigger finger of the shooter

While it’s easy to laugh about those quality problems, we are often not seeing the bigger picture. Chinese created a perfect solution for many countries that couldn’t afford anything else. They took over an entire section of the international market in which no one could compete with them.

Their best facilities are used for the production of modern weapons for their own army, and the outdated factories still provide some cash flow, selling Type 56-2 for a dime a dozen. And for the money, it is definitely the best rifle you can get. And they weren’t all that bad. Just some.

In the next (and the last) part of this series of articles, we will take a look at the most recent variation of Chinese AK that somehow escaped the spotlight until now – the Chinese AK 103.

Vladimir Onokoy​

Vladimir Onokoy is a small arms subject matter expert and firearms instructor. Over the years he worked in 15 different countries as a security contractor, armorer, firearms industry sales representative, product manager, and consultant.
His articles were published in the Recoil magazine, Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defence Journal, and Silah Report, he also created several video series such as “Gun myths”, “Kalashnikov: around the world”, “Larry Vickers in Russia” and “Kalashnikov: evolution” that are available on YouTube.
► Email: machaksilver at gmail dot com.
► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Vladimir-O...ns-and-other-unpopular-stuff-107273143980300/
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► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/machaksilver

Chinese AKs – The Most Controversial Kalashnikov Variant. Part 3 – Type 56-2 - Quantity Over Quality -

In Part 1 of this article, I wrote about the early days of AK production in China, Part 2 was dedicated to the "golden years" of Type 56 history.

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