Chinese Type 63 Rifle

China's first home-designed rifle, told from the 1993 insider account in *Light Weapons*, the PLA's own failure record, the US Army's captured examples and the import rules: how an SKS with an AK bolt was meant to replace both, why the factories redesigned it into failure, how to tell it from an SKS, what is known of its upkeep, and why no American can own one.

Firearms

Chinese Type 63 Rifle · Deep Dive

Chinese Type 63 Rifle

The rifle passed China's state trials in 1963, then had its drawings changed more than 700 times on the factory floor during the Cultural Revolution, until zeroed rifles would not hit the target a few days later.

China's first home-designed rifle, told from the 1993 insider account in *Light Weapons*, the PLA's own failure record, the US Army's captured examples and the import rules: how an SKS with an AK bolt was meant to replace both, why the factories redesigned it into failure, how to tell it from an SKS, what is known of its upkeep, and why no American can own one.

Photo: AK47 and K63 rifle by Steve Knight (kitmasterbloke) · CC BY 2.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 Origins: One Rifle to Replace Two, and the Name the West Gave It Why the People's Liberation Army wanted a single rifle with the SKS's accuracy and bayonet and the AK's automatic fire, how a 'three-way' team of students, soldiers and factory hands designed it from 1959 to 1963, what the design was supposed to deliver, and why Western books call it the Type 68
    2. Vol 2 How It Works: An AK Bolt in an SKS, a Gas Regulator, and Three Sears The Type 63's cycle part by part: the two-port gas regulator and the separate short-stroke piston, the low, wide carrier and the AK-pattern rotating bolt, top-loading from SKS clips into a detachable magazine, the bolt hold-open, the self-contained trigger group with its three sears and 0-1-2 selector, sights and bayonet, and the published figures side by side
    3. Vol 3 The Production Collapse, the Withdrawal, and Where the Rifles Went How a well-reviewed rifle was redesigned on the factory floor during the Cultural Revolution: the pressed-in barrel, the riveted receiver of thirteen parts, more than 700 drawing changes, the zero that would not hold and the sparks in the shooter's face; the withdrawal of 1978, the brief revival for the 1979 war, the Type 81 that actually replaced it, and the rifles' later life in Vietnam, Cambodia, Albania and beyond
    4. Vol 4 Telling Them Apart: Type 63 or SKS, Forged or Riveted, and the Markings Nobody Has Catalogued How to tell a Type 63 from a Chinese SKS across a room and in the hand, the four Type 63s photographed from the same side at the same scale, early and late receivers and carriers, the magazines, the airborne folding-stock sample, what the markings do and do not say, and the rifles that share its name
    5. Vol 5 Field Strip, Maintenance and Repair What the sources show of the Type 63's stripping into groups, the gas regulator and the trigger group, the cleaning kit in the butt, what a correct procedure has to account for when no Chinese manual can be found, and the failures the PLA recorded, part by part, with what each one means for a rifle today
    6. Vol 6 The Law: A Machine Gun from an Embargoed Country What a Type 63 is in US federal law: a machine gun under the National Firearms Act and § 922(o); why no transferable example was found and why the 1968 amnesty almost certainly came too early; why it cannot be imported for anyone, the 1994 China ban that was announced at a press conference rather than by executive order, curio status that changes nothing, semi-automatic SKS rifles sold under the same name, and Michigan