The Long-Lost Liu

I got my copy of America's 1st Freedom and they had a short article on an interesting Chinese rifle.

In the turbulent years surrounding World War I, many nations experimented with upgrading the traditional bolt-action rifle. One such Semi-automatic was the Chinese Liu. While in charge of the Hanyang Arsenal General T.E. Liu developed a gas-operated rifle with a muzzle gas trap cap, utilizing a hinged block at the rear of the bolt that dropped down for locking. General Liu came to America in 1914 and contracted Pratt & Whitney to produce the machinery neccessary for quantity manufacturing as well as prototype 8mm rifles for testing and evaluation at Springfield Armory. But after the machinery was loaded onto a boat bound for China, the vessel sank in transit. Subsequently General Liu suffered a stroke, and while the recovered shipment eventaully reach Shanghai in 1919, Liu's brainchild was never to see adoption and issue.

But I ask you what if the ship never sank and General Liu never has his stroke? What would be the long term effect of General Liu's rifle being adopted by the Chinese?

Lets say the rifle is adopted as the standered infantry rifle and things go per-OTL and the Chinese eventually end up in a war with the Japanese, do large numbers of Chinese troops equiped with semi-automatic rifles make a difference large enough to change the war to any great degree?

So instead of the Hanyang 88 and Chaing Kai-Shek rifle as the standerd rifles they have the Liu, so the NRA's (National Revolutionary Army) would have the semi-automatic Liu rifle, Chinese copy of the Mauser C96, Chinese copy of the ZB-26, Type 24 (Chinese varient of the water-cooled Maxim heavy machine gun), The Chinese copy of the Mg-34, as well as the Chinese copy of the M18 aub-machinegun. Does the increased fire power among the Chinese troops over the Japanese have any substantial effect on the early battles of the Seconed Sino-Japanese war?
 
I wouldn't say it would make that much of a difference.

The vast majority of Chinese troops were ill-equiped, ill-led and ill-fed with the exception of the 'elite' divisions which in a normal army would be merely a Regular one.

The problems that the Nationalist Army faces are mostly structural, better equipment would probably wind up 'lost.'
 

Hendryk

Banned
Here's what that rifle looked like. I haven't used the idea so far in my TL, but I'm keeping my options open.

Liu Qingren's automatic rifle.jpg
 
Lets say the rifle is adopted as the standered infantry rifle and things go per-OTL and the Chinese eventually end up in a war with the Japanese, do large numbers of Chinese troops equiped with semi-automatic rifles make a difference large enough to change the war to any great degree?

So instead of the Hanyang 88 and Chaing Kai-Shek rifle as the standerd rifles they have the Liu, so the NRA's (National Revolutionary Army) would have the semi-automatic Liu rifle, Chinese copy of the Mauser C96, Chinese copy of the ZB-26, Type 24 (Chinese varient of the water-cooled Maxim heavy machine gun), The Chinese copy of the Mg-34, as well as the Chinese copy of the M18 aub-machinegun. Does the increased fire power among the Chinese troops over the Japanese have any substantial effect on the early battles of the Seconed Sino-Japanese war?
First of all rifles don't make much difference in combat. Statistically less than 10% of battlefield casualties are caused by rifle fire, more than half are caused by artillery. Second WWII was a war of numbers. The Chinese industry was severely hampered by lack of steel and propellant production after the major industrial areas were all captured by the Japanese. As a result soldiers were always short on weapons and ammo. They couldn't even equip everyone with a rifle and some had to do with swords. Given the choice, it was better to have more cheap rifles than a few expensive self loading ones.

Lastly the self loading rifle was never intended to be general issue. It required imported alloy steel from either Germany or Sweden and ammo which had to be specially produced with better quality control. It would've been nice to have for some select units I'm sure, but it wouldn't have any strategic effect.

I'll see if I can find the photos.
 
Well the idea is production begins in 1919 or there abouts, but you all raise valid points the NRA was plauged by command, logistical, and training issues that hampered it to a great degree. But remember General Liu purchased large amounts of industrial machinery that was lost at sea, and the premise of the POD is that the first shipment of the machinery isn't lost and I think that alone could have a some degree of impact. With the American built machinery the Chinese could in theory start production of the rifle in 1917-1918 so with that in mind the Chinese have about twenty some odd years to build large numbers of this rifle but taken into account the instability of China in this period I kinda doubt that the rifle will see any level of mass production and even by 1936 the Liu rifle most likely will only be found in the hands of the front line NRA forces with the rest being armed as per OTL with the Hanyang 88 and the Chinese copy of the 98K.

But I kinda enjoyed toying with the idea that with some extra little PODs here and there you could end up with a slightly more industrialized and stable Nationalist China that over the 20 or so years the rifle has been in production its been able to put at least a decent number of them in the hands of the NRA forces. Like two ideas I was toying with where the Germans put more into the China mission and the China mission stays depolyed longer, don't know how I'd wrangle it but I thought they were interesting none the less.

Also another idea was toying with was increased American spending and investment in building China as a counter to the Soviets and Japanese.

Is increased American investment (lets say triple what happened OTL) in Chinese industry in the 1910's and 1920's plausible?
 
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There were literally dozens of self-loaders on the market between 1910 and 1930, including such fine specimen as ZH-29, developed for Chinese market. One more rifle would not make a difference. Besides, I have a feeling that muzzle gas trap system would be a dud, especially operated by typical Chinese infantryman. Autoloaders of WWII vintage, even best of them, were temperamental beasts and required well-trained soldier to operate them (read on SVD debacle).
 
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