Recently, I came across an interesting video, which shows the evolution of Chinese and Taiwanese (officially Republic of China) uniforms and firearms. It compares them side by side in chronological order. You can watch that video below or scroll down to see the screenshots for a quick reference. The screenshots cover only military uniforms and arms shown in the first half of the video. The second half is about dress uniforms. If the history of uniforms is interesting to you, it worths watching the video to the end.

Interesting to note that at some point Soviet weapons start to dominate in the Chinese army while the Taiwanese armed forces become equipped with American firearm designs.

Note also that China probably had to boost their own firearms industry starting from the collapse of the Soviet Union. You can’t depend on a non-existent state to furnish you with new firearm designs, right? If that is one of the reasons for designing the QBZ family of rifles and other domestic firearms, then the collapse of Soviet Union has really helped the development of Chinese small arms industry.

Although the video is not extremely informative and doesn’t go into details, it is still pretty interesting and entertaining. I hope they’ll make similar videos comparing other countries too. Would be great to see such a video comparing the USA and Soviet Union/Russia or USA and China etc.