Type 63

The Type 63 is a Chinese 7.62x39mm assault rifle that grafted the select-fire action of the Type 56 - the Chinese AK-47 - onto the overall layout of the SKS, known in Chinese service as the Type 56 carbine. The PLA valued the SKS but wanted automatic fire and a detachable high-capacity magazine, while retaining the wooden stock and folding bayonet for close-quarters fighting and, crucially, the ability to build the new weapon on existing SKS and AK-47 tooling. Work began in 1959 under a three-tier team of factory technicians, university engineering staff and students, and military personnel. The first prototypes appeared in 1963 and were approved for service by Mao Zedong as chair of the Central Military Commission.

The rifle is gas operated with a receiver and barrel closely modelled on the SKS but a rotating bolt taken from the AK-47. It has a two-piece gas regulator with two gas settings, selected by pressing the regulator retainer towards the gas tube; the regulator could throw sparks when fired, which led to a protective sleeve on later rifles. Fire selector markings on the right of the receiver read "0" for safe, "1" for semi-automatic and "2" for automatic. It feeds from proprietary 15- and 20-round magazines, but will take standard AK magazines if the bolt stop is removed or ground down, and a seated magazine can still be topped up from an SKS stripper clip through the bolt carrier. A folding spike bayonet is fitted as on the Type 56 carbine.

Serial production from 1969 became a case study in what happens without quality control. No inspectors were appointed, PLA personnel failed to test sample rifles, and factory managers ignored the design team's regulations: almost 700 unauthorised changes were made without testing or approval. Barrels were pressed and pinned into receivers rather than threaded, which was cheaper but caused barrels to deform under stress and fit poorly, while the retaining pins themselves failed frequently. Milled receivers were replaced with stamped and riveted ones specifying so many rivets that inconsistent riveting compromised the receiver. Receivers and barrels were painted rather than blued, and the paint flaked off almost immediately, leaving the metal to rust. A 1974 government programme to improve manufacturing came too late: accuracy had been permanently degraded, the rifle was less accurate than the SKS it was meant to replace, and receivers continued to crack in normal field use.

By the late 1970s the general staff in nine military regions had rejected the weapon, and the PLA ordered it withdrawn in 1978, re-tooling the production line for the SKS and re-issuing the older carbine to affected units. A small number of reworked Type 63s - with redesigned bolts, recoil springs and firing pins, and modified to take Type 56 magazines - returned briefly to service in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War to relieve a shortage of automatic weapons, and were withdrawn again when it ended. Between one and six million were built. China exported them as military aid to North Vietnam, where the rifle is designated K63, and to the Khmer Rouge, who used them in the Cambodian-Vietnamese War; Albania was the main operator outside Asia and probably the source of the Type 63s used by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The rifle's unique gas regulator was later carried over into the Type 81. It is occasionally misidentified in Western sources as the Type 68.