Origin
China
China was a major source of weapons innovation, inventing gunpowder, the crossbow, cast iron production, and early firearms centuries before their European equivalents. Chinese armies fielded diverse weapons including ji halberds, dao swords, and eventually matchlock muskets and early artillery.
Chinese Arms & Weapons
Overview
China's weapons history is among the oldest and most innovative in the world. Chinese metallurgists mastered bronze casting and later cast iron production centuries ahead of European smiths. Chinese inventors developed the crossbow, gunpowder, and the first firearms. The depth and continuity of Chinese military technology — from the Shang dynasty to the People's Liberation Army — is unmatched.
Ancient and Medieval Weapons
Bronze Age (c. 1600–500 BCE)
- Ge (dagger-axe) — The signature Chinese bronze weapon; a blade mounted at right angles to a long haft; used for hooking and slashing; mass-produced in Shang and Zhou arsenals
- Mao (spear) — Standard infantry thrusting weapon
- Nu (crossbow) — China developed the crossbow centuries before its appearance in Europe; Chinese crossbows featured sophisticated bronze trigger mechanisms and were produced in standardized, interchangeable parts during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE)
- Compound bow — Used by Chinese cavalry; effective and powerful
The Crossbow
The Chinese repeating crossbow (chu-ko-nu or zhuge nu), attributed to Zhuge Liang (181–234 CE), could fire multiple bolts in rapid succession — a remarkable mechanical achievement. Mass-production of standardized crossbow parts was practiced during the Qin dynasty.
Gunpowder and Firearms
China invented gunpowder in the 9th century CE, initially using it in incendiary weapons before developing projectile firearms:
- Fire lance (10th century) — A spear with a gunpowder tube attached; the first firearm, though more flamethrower than gun
- Hand cannon (13th century) — The earliest metal firearms appear in China; Yuan dynasty examples survive
- Rockets — Used in warfare from the Song dynasty; multiple-stage rockets appear in Chinese records
Swords
- Jian — Double-edged straight sword; the "gentleman's weapon"; associated with scholars, nobles, and the Taoist/martial arts tradition
- Dao — Single-edged curved or straight sword; the soldier's weapon; analogous to the Western saber; many regional and period variations
20th Century
China was supplied by Soviet weapons in the early PRC period, then developed its own arms industry. The Type 56 (a Chinese AK-47 copy) and Type 81 assault rifle are among the most widely produced Chinese weapons. China developed nuclear weapons in 1964.
This article is a stub. Contributions covering specific dynasties, weapons, and conflicts are welcome.
-
Chinese Dao
The dao — the single-edged Chinese saber — was the standard sidearm of Chinese soldiers for the better part of two thousand years, honored in the martial tradition as the 'general of a hundred soldiers.' From the ring-pommel chopping blades of Han cavalry to the curved willow-leaf and goose-quill sabers that armed the Ming and Qing armies, it was the practical soldier's sword: simple to learn, brutal in the cut, and issued in the hundreds of thousands.
-
Chinese Ji
The ji is the Chinese halberd: a spear point combined with a side blade on a long shaft, able to thrust, hook and cut. It grew out of the bronze ge, or dagger-axe, of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, when smiths began to cast the dagger-axe and spearhead as one or mount them together. Through the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties it was one of the main infantry and chariot weapons of China, made in iron from the Han period on. It later became a ceremonial and martial-arts weapon, famous in fiction as Lü Bu's crescent-bladed halberd.
-
K-50M
The K-50M is a North Vietnamese submachine gun of the late 1950s and 1960s: a rebuilt Chinese Type 50, itself a copy of the Soviet PPSh-41. North Vietnamese arsenals shortened the barrel jacket, moved the front sight onto the barrel, added a pistol grip, and replaced the wooden stock with a telescoping wire stock in the style of the French MAT-49. The result was lighter and handier than its parent. It armed Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops through the war with the United States, especially before the AK-47 became universal.
-
Mauser C96
The Mauser C96 is a German semi-automatic pistol that entered service in 1896, designed by the Feederle brothers at Mauser's Oberndorf works. Its round grip earned it the nickname 'Broomhandle'. It loads from a stripper clip into a fixed ten-round magazine ahead of the trigger and takes a hollow wooden holster-stock that turns it into a light carbine. Over a million were made, and it served for half a century with armies and officers from the Boer War to Winston Churchill at Omdurman, Germany's 'Red 9' of 1916, and China's warlord and revolutionary armies.
-
SKS
The SKS is Sergei Simonov's semi-automatic carbine for the Soviet 7.62x39mm intermediate cartridge, adopted in 1949 and made obsolete in Soviet service within a few years by the AK-47. A gas-operated, tilting-bolt rifle with a fixed ten-round magazine loaded by stripper clip and a folding bayonet, it was simple, accurate and easy to train on, and its second life was vast: China built millions as the Type 56, Yugoslavia, Romania, East Germany, Albania and North Korea produced their own, and it armed the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army throughout the Vietnam War.
-
Tokarev TT-33 Pistol
The Tokarev TT-33 was the service pistol of the Red Army from the 1930s until the Makarov replaced it in the 1950s: Fedor Tokarev's stripped-down Browning short-recoil design, chambered for the powerful bottlenecked 7.62x25mm cartridge derived from the Mauser C96's, with no manual safety and a hammer-and-sear assembly that lifts out as one unit for cleaning. About 1.7 million were made in the Soviet Union, and China, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and North Korea built millions more, arming communist forces in Korea, Vietnam and every Cold War proxy conflict.
-
Trebuchet
The counterweight trebuchet was the heaviest artillery of the Middle Ages: a great pivoting beam whose short arm carried a box of earth or stone weighing many tons, and whose long arm swung a sling that hurled stones of 50 to 150 kilograms against castle walls. Descended from the Chinese man-powered traction engine, it appeared around the Mediterranean in the late twelfth century, battered Acre, Stirling and Xiangyang, and dominated siege warfare for two hundred years until gunpowder bombards made stone-throwing obsolete.