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A while back I mentioned that I was thinking about writing more about firearms, and over the past few weeks I’ve decided to take the plunge. I’m not really interested in reviews, or writing range reports or anything like that, and instead intend to focus on some of the more esoteric aspects of firearms that interest me.

Today’s piece is inspired by Ian McCollum (Forgotten Weapons) and Jason Clower (Type 56: The Story of China’s Army) and their ongoing collaboration regarding Chinese firearms, especially those of the People’s Liberation Army.

Professor Clower has a vast knowledge of China, having lived there, knows the language and has access to source unavailable the rest of us. I greatly enjoy his videos, and that is what compels me to offer some corrections.

What actually set me off is a video I’d overlooked from a year ago that resurfaced in my feed. In it, the good professor is asked about Nationalist arms, and he responds with a joke that “Chiang Kai-shek was the greatest quartermaster that the Chinese Red Army ever had.”

What annoys me about this take is that it is so lazy. Both of these guys should know about the arms factories churning out German-pattern “Commission” rifles and later Mauser Kar98ks on machinery shipped to the government by Germany. The Commission rifles were initially used by the Imperial governments and later were taken over by the Nationalists and a million of those rifles were produced before production was switched to the Kar98k during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Forgotten Weapons has actually featured these rifles. In fact, at one point he featured Chinese weapons expert Bin Shih whose book I subsequently purchased.

There is a persistent myth (backed by the Chicoms) that the Nationalists basically sat around hoarding supplies and avoiding combat, and Chiang Kai-shek sold most of his aid on the black market. When Japan was defeated, the plucky Communists sneakily beat the lazy decadent Nationalists who gave up without much of a fight.

It’s nonsense on stilts. The truth (which I discovered while researching Walls of Men) is that the Nationalists fought desperately and competently against Japan, inflicting sharp defeats no one in the West has heard about. The cream of the Nationalist army was sacrificed in battles on the North China Plain and in the defense of Nanking and eventually Wuhan, where the Japanese were stopped cold.

While China did have some productive capacity, it was very limited, and though the arsenals were moved deeper into China, raw materials were always a problem. When Japan bullied the Great Britain into closing the Burma Road, the Nationalists were effectively on their own.

With the outbreak of World War II, Western aid was sent “over The Hump” but the air leak was dangerous and tenuous, allowing only a trickle of supplies. This crippling shortage of everything from rifles to artillery to the ammunition to use them paralyzed the Nationalists.

It was the Communists who sat out the war, and their one attempt at a major offensive was an abject failure. Of course, today they claim all the credit for a victory they did nothing to earn.

Professor Clower claimed that the Soviets didn’t do much to supply Mao, but that’s also false. The Soviet intervention in August 1945 was decisive, and the swift Japanese surrender gave the Soviets a massive trove of Japanese arms and ammunition, all of which was handed over to Mao’s ill-equipped insurgents. The Soviets also had huge stocks of capture Kar98k rifles, which were completely parts compatible with those made in China, and these were also put at Mao’s disposal.

Chiang Kai-shek knew all of this was going to happen, and wanted to strike immediately after the surrender, only to be held back by the Americans, who nursed delusional dreams of a power-sharing arrangement.

When hostilities finally broke out the Chinese Red Army was a much more formidable force than it had been during the war, and that was thanks to Stalin.

On the subject of whether these old weapons were provided as aid to Vietnam (and elsewhere) the answer is (contra Clower) a resounding yes.

It has not gotten much attention, but there were “bring back” guns in both Korea and Vietnam. A while ago I bought a book about Vietnam bring backs. To be sure, it’s an obscure work, and desperately needs an editor and more information, but Seafield’s book demonstrates the vast variety of weaponry provided to the Viet Cong and North Vietnam.

I’m too lazy to dig it out, but McCollum also mentioned a web site about surplus ships, aircraft and firearms, and it featured many photos of US troops looking at piles of rifles captured in Vietnam. Many of these were Mausers or Arisakas.

The process was basically this: Having conquered mainland China, Mao turned to the Soviets for help in developing modern armaments. Because China was so primitive, it took time for new arsenals to come online, and so the first Chinese weapons were the easiest to make: submachineguns. The Type 53 Rifle (a Mosin-Nagant copy) followed and then of course Type 56 saw the AK and SKS enter production.

At the same time, China consolidated its various captured weapons and augmented them with Soviet largesse, particular Kar98ks, which the Chinese were familiar with and also had ammunition plants already running. I’ve read that the bulk of the “volunteers” sent to Korea were Nationalist deserters/defectors who were considered politically unreliable. At any rate, after Korea, China had time to focus on modernizing the PLA, and as more of the Soviet stuff was produced, the older rifles were put into militia service. Clower has this part exactly right.

But by the 1960s, there were enough AKs and SKS derivatives (and Mosins) to abandon production of Mauser ammunition and focus on Soviet calibers, and so the surplus rifles were sent abroad as military aid.

I have one of those Mausers, manufactured in 1945, and the portion of the engraving identifying it as a “Chiang Kai-shek Rifle” has been obliterated by the Communists. It is a hybrid creature, with a German replacement bolt and stock. None of the serial numbers match, so it was a total rebuild.

The stock has symbols stamped into it, but they are too blurred to read, but I am reliably informed that they indicate militia service. Many of these rifles were imported into the US in the 1980s, along with Mauser C96 Broomhandles. I have one of those with Chinese stamps on it, and of course it has the import marks required since 1968. The rifle has no import marks, so it came over before 1968, and was likely a Vietnam bring back.

These rifles are rare, but they do exist, and what research I was able to accomplish online indicates that US military authorities were not troubled by GIs who wanted to take bolt-action rifles home with them when their tour was over. These have since circulated into the wider firearms market and Seafield’s book is basically a compendium of auctions the author organized.

To be clear, I’m not trying to dunk on these guys. They know a lot more about firearms and China than I do, and that’s really the point. I’m not exactly a tourist at this point, but I haven’t spend decades on the topic, and so it’s disappointing to see them get things so badly wrong.

I think in McCollum’s case, he’s done so much, it’s hard to retain it all. I think the Professor has immersed himself in Communist literature to the point where he’s (perhaps unconsciously) accepted some of the narrative – not that the PLA was great, but that the Nationalists were always terrible and Chiang Kai-shek was hoplessly corrupt and incompetent.

He was corrupt, but that goes with the territory. As I’ve repeatedly stressed, China does not have a warrior society, and people who choose a military life routinely use it to enrich themselves since they certainly aren’t getting any social prestige out of it. The PLA today is notoriously corrupt, so it’s nothing new.

As I pointed out in Walls of Men, he was actually quite a good commander. Put simply, one does not put down the warlords, unify China and drive the Communists into the mountains without some level of talent. I will also repeat, that the Nationalists put up a stubborn resistance against the Japanese and even won some battles, but American sources generally overlook this.

I should disclose that I did reach out to Professor Clower who graciously replied and I gave him a copy of Walls of Men. If he stumbled upon this, hopefully it will motivate him to read it.