Nation of origin: People’s Republic of China
Ammunition: 7.62 x 25 mm Tokarev
Operation: recoil
Weight: with 10-round magazine, 1.1 kg
Length 300 mm
Length of barrel: approx 140 mm
Magazine capacity: 10 or 20 rounds
Muzzle velocity: 470 m/s
Rate of fire: burst, cyclic, 60 rpm
Over the years, the Chinese small-arms industry has churned out a surprising array of pistols. Many of them have been direct copies of existing weapons, such as the still-produced Type 54 which is a direct and unashamed copy of the Soviet Tokarev TT-33. Other pistols, especially between the wars, have been of doubtful workmanship and quality, but those days are now long gone and modern production Chinese pistols are of a standard that compares well with others manufactured elsewhere.
However, few Chinese pistols have been of original design, and among the many designs copied over the years, the old Mauser C/96 ‘broomhandle’, and in particular its Model 712 variant (more usually known as the ‘Schnellfeuer’ in the West), was much favored, to the extent that tens of thousands were imported from Germany during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Once in China, they were directly copied in detail by local industry. At one time it was quite the thing for every Chinese senior officer to have a bodyguard armed with an imported or locally-made copy of a Model 712, and many small workshops churned out their own particular versions of the Mauser original to meet an avid demand. The seeming affection for the imposing Model 712 was little shared in other parts of the world, but for good reason the Chinese had a great respect for its extremely high rate of fire. The Model 712 came into the machine category, i.e. it was a hand weapon that could produce fully automatic fire at one press of the trigger (they are also sometimes referred to as machine carbines).
While the high fire rate did make the Model 712 a weapon to respect at close quarters, it was also extremely difficult to control. As soon as the trigger was pressed, a single burst of fire could empty the magazine, and the resultant violent recoil forces would rapidly force the barrel upwards, to waste most of the shots away from the target. However, the Chinese developed a technique of simply turning the pistol on its side so that, when fired on automatic, the pistol produced a horizontal and fear some fan of fire that could clear a room.
The Chinese affection for the old Mauser pistol remains to this day. Some of the old pre-war examples may still be encountered on mainland China, and such is the local respect for the basic design that it is still in production, albeit in a much amended form.
The producers are the mighty China North Industries Corporation, usually known as NORINCO, who are now the main Communist Chinese armaments concern. Among their wide- ranging weapons output, which ranges from tanks and artillery to ammunition and land mines, they produce a Mauser C/96 derivative known as the Automatic Pistol 7.62 mm Type 80. Despite its cleaned-up and smoothed-off outlines, including a revised butt shape, it can still be recognized as a Mauser. The Type 80 is a machine pistol that can produce bursts of fire at a cyclic rate of 60 rounds a minute (much slower than the old Model 712, which could churn out up to 900 rounds a minute) and to accommodate this output, two sizes of vertical box magazine are available, one holding 10 rounds, the other 20. The mechanism is, for a pistol, rather complicated, being based on an internal reciprocating bolt allied to an external hammer. If required, single shot fire can be selected, but the main attraction for the Chinese is the automatic fire capability.
In order to keep the pistol under some Sort of control while firing on automatic, the old Mausers used to have a wooden holster that could be fixed on to the pistol butt to produce a form of machine carbine. The Type 80 carries over this principle, but in stead of a solid holster the Type 80 uses a clip-on telescopic butt with a rudimentary butt stock. The carbine notion is even taken one stage further on the Type 80, by the addition of a short knife bayonet, making the Type 80 one of the few pistols ever intended to accommodate such an accessory.
Other changes made by NORINCO to the basic Mauser design include the slight tilting forward of the magazine housing. This introduces the cartridge to the feed mechanism at a more sympathetic angle than was originally the case, and so the feed overall is now even more reliable. The alterations to the butt outline have already been mentioned, but they must certainly improve the handling of the weapon - the old Mauser ‘broomhandle’ was not an easy butt to grip with comfort. It also seems certain that many of the old time-consuming manufacturing techniques involving hand machining and finishing have given way to more modern production methods - the magazine housing appears to utilize metal stampings.
It is likely that the Type 80 is used by the Chinese armed forces, and it has been offered for export, but few have yet to make their way outside China. Despite the age of its origins, the Type 80 should find some takers, for one of the main assets of the Mauser pistols has always been the ammunition employed. The original Mauser C/96s used the 7.63 x 25 mm cartridge which, in its time, was one of the most powerful and accurate available, so powerful in fact that for many years the Mauser C/96 pistol was one of the most favored weapons utilized by political and professional assassins. The 7.62 x 25 mm Tokarev cartridge, known in China as the Type 51, is virtually identical to the Mauser original and therefore it makes the Type 80 a weapon to respect. The Chinese claim that the Type 80 has an effective range extending up to 150 meters (no doubt with the butt in use) and while not every user will obtain good results at such a range, it still ex tends the combat range of the Type 80 beyond many of its more modern contemporaries.
Fig. 3-31: The Chinese Type 80 automatic pistol clearly showing its Mauser
ancestry.