Development
Ever since the expulsion of the Kuomintang government, concluding the Chinese Civil War, the People's Liberation Army relied heavily upon support from the Soviet Union for supplies and weaponry. At the commencement of the post-Civil War period, the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics cooperated heavily towards the industrialisation of China, which had experienced decades of ceaseless warfare. During this period of Sino-Soviet friendship, Chinese factories, with the assistance of Soviet blue-prints and technical assistance, began mass-producing Soviet designed weapons such as the Type 50 submachine gun, Type 54 pistol, Type 56 carbine and the Type 56 assault rifle.
Two such blue-print given to China from the Soviet Union was the German Walther PPK pistol and the Soviet Makarov PM pistol, which the Chinese manufactured under the designations 'Type 52 pistol' and 'Type 59' pistol, respectively. Following the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s to the 1960s, the Soviet Union withdrew its support for the Chinese Communist Party, leaving China to develop its arms industry itself. Beginning in 1960, Chinese engineers began designing a new, indigenous pistol for military officers and police based on the Type 52 and 59 pistols. By 1964 a final design had been developed, and was subsequently named the 'Type 64 pistol' although it would take until 1980, two decades after beginning of its development, to reach production due to Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which consistently hampered the Type 64s development and production. With its introduction in 1980, the Type 64 became the first indigenously developed firearm created by the People's Liberation Army. With the introduction of newer, more modern pistols, such as the QSZ-92 in the 1990s, the Type 64 has been slowly been phased out of PLA service and is now only used by civilian police forces, who also intend to phase out the Type 64 within the coming years with a new, yet-unnamed 9mm revolver which was introduced in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Type 64 Pistol
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