In the last two decades the leap made by the armed forces of the People's Republic of China has been spectacular. From being a massive but very backward army, they have gone, thanks to the lessons of conflicts such as the Gulf War and humiliations such as the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996, to putting all their efforts into developing modern weapons systems. The Type 99 battle tank, in its various and increasingly advanced variants, is a good example of this. At the beginning of the 50s, the good harmony between Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin allowed the Chinese to begin building their own armored industry under Soviet tutelage, using the T-34-85 first and the T-54A later. The latter remained the basis for all Chinese MBT designs until the mid-80s. It must be taken into account, however, that at that same time the United States already had the M1 Abrams, Germany with the Leopard 2 and Russia with the T-72B. China's delay was very noticeable and was only partially compensated by the large number of tanks deployed, something that has changed in recent years.
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