In Fiction[]
Appearance[]
With sleek black hair put into two ball-style buns, Type 63 differs wildly from the other students of Akaganekou in that she has no feline features and instead has pig-like ears and no noticeable tail.
Personality[]
Nothing is really known about her personality, as like all the other Chinese rifles, she has only had about four pages of screen time.
In Real Life[]
History[]
In the early 1960's, the People's Republic of China wanted to distance themselves from the Soviet Union and become more self reliant and push itself into a regional power. To achieve this the People's Liberation Army was tasked with the development with a replacement for the Type 56 rifles that were just copies of the Soviet AKM.
After years of development time, the PLA combined aspects of the two Type 56 rifles (both the SKS and AKM copies) into a new rifle for front line use designated the Type 63 (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the Type 68).
More than One million of these rifles were made and sent not only to PLA armies but to several other nations that were within the PRC's influence, such as Albania and Vietnam.
Due to what the PLA considered poor performance of the Type 63, and failures to fix said performance in several improvement programs, the Type 63 was only used by the PLA until the mid-1970's. The remaining inventory of the Type 63 was either sold to trading partners or given as military aid.
Performance[]
According to the PLA, the Type 63 was an unreliable and inaccurate rifle that focused to heavily on long range capability without given consideration to automatic fire at close range. The reliability issue may actually be attributed to the fact that a rotating bolt was used, instead of a more traditional tilting bolt design while being combine with an open section for the charging handle to come back into the receiver cover that did not have a dust cover for the recoil spring to prevent mud or other foreign objects from causing malfunctions.
As for it's accuracy issues, that one is still debatable as to whether or not there was an accuracy issue or if there was just issues with proper training with the rifle.
Users[]
Afghanistan
Albania
Cambodia
China
Guyana
Vietnam [Only place where it is still in use]
Availability[]
Let's be frank, none were ever imported and these are all machine guns. Although more than One million of these were made, none were ever imported into the United States, Canada, or Switzerland. However, there may be light at the end of the tunnel as these were exported to Albania and may make their way into these countries as parts kits.