Chinese Type 56 AK-47: Operation Cyclone and the Taliban connection

Key points: Chinese Type 56 AK-47

• The Soviets handed China AK-47 tooling and blueprints in 1955, and Lujan puts production from 1956 to today at 10 to 15 million rifles, roughly a fifth of every AK-pattern rifle ever built.
• Chinese factory markings were coded: triangles meant military production, ovals meant civilian export, and a triangle stamped 66 meant the rifle was built to go to war.
• The quickest visual tells for a Type 56 are a fully enclosed front sight post instead of the usual open U, a deep blue finish instead of the AKM's matte parkerizing, and a permanently attached spike bayonet nicknamed the pig sticker.
• Underneath, the Type 56 runs a hard chrome bolt carrier, an 800-meter rear sight instead of 1,000, a heavier barrel profile and a 1.5 mm stamped receiver against the AKM's 1 mm, while keeping the same 7.62x39 chambering, 30-round magazines and gas piston system.
• The rifle on camera is not a military Type 56 but an AK-47S, the semi-auto civilian export version, and an AK specialist verifies it by video call as a genuine state-factory export gun, identifiable by the absence of a pinned or welded bayonet.
• In Vietnam the Type 56 outnumbered Soviet-made AKs, early export rifles had their factory markings stripped and were stamped M22 for deniability, and China and Vietnam then fought each other in 1979 with both sides carrying the same rifle.
• Operation Cyclone moved the rifles to the Mujahideen through Pakistan's ISI, growing from roughly 20 to 30 million dollars a year to 630 million by 1987, and Lujan follows the surplus forward to Taliban fighters carrying Type 56s into Kabul in 1996.

About this Gun Review video

Chinese Type 56 AK-47 history: Lujan traces the rifle from the 1955 Soviet technology transfer through Vietnam, where Chinese AKs outnumbered Soviet-made ones, into the CIA's Operation Cyclone pipeline that armed the Mujahideen with rifles nobody could trace back to Washington. The identification segment covers what separates a Type 56 from an AKM, including the fully enclosed front sight, the deep blue finish, the welded pig sticker bayonet, the hard chrome bolt carrier and the 1.5 mm receiver, and an AK expert confirms on camera that the rifle shown is a state-factory civilian export AK-47S.

Transcript: Chinese Type 56