#.236Cal
Modern Intermediate Calibers 016: The 5.8x42mm Chinese
In the mid-1950s, the People’s Republic of China followed the Soviet Union’s example and adopted the intermediate 7.62x39mm round. This decision substantially helped to promote that cartridge’s ubiquity throughout the world, as millions of cheap Chinese-made SKS and AK rifles were exported to every corner of the globe. However, at the very end of Chairman Mao Zedong’s regime, an effort was started to develop a new, modernized caliber that would improve performance and conserve materials versus the 7.62×39. That program resulted in the 5.8x42mm caliber, standardized in the late 1980s with the DBP-87 and DBP-88 rounds. Unusually, the 5.8x42mm used a system with two different overall length standards, one of about 58mm for the DBP-87 rifle cartridge, and the other of about 62mm for the DBP-88 support round. This allowed the marksman’s rifle to shoot the DBP-87, if necessary, but also allowed for a longer, lower drag bullet to be put in the DBP-88 case, improving the ballistics of the QBU-88 marksman’s rifle and the QJY-88 general purpose machine gun.
