Bullets made in China inferior: report

China is still using a bullet type that was developed nearly 30 years back and inferior to the ones made in foreign countries, a military research report said.
China's bullet-making technology has caught up with that of the advanced level in foreign countries, boasting absolute advantages in many performance indicators but they still need to improve, the China Military online quoted an analysis report as saying.
The report, written by Yao Ziqian and Li Wei from the PLA National Defense University , said the 5.8mm standard bullet which was successfully developed in 1987, is only used by China as the main bullet type.

Compared with the NATO's 5.56mm bullet (SS109) and Russia's 5.45mm bullet (7N6), China's 5.8mm bullet (DBP-87) features high initial velocity, long direct range and strong penetration, which ensures its high resistance to external impact, high firing rate and hitting precision.
However, they pointed out that the "Chinese bullet is inferior to foreign bullets in four aspects: the bullet type isn't complete, performance isn't good enough, material of gun propellant is of poor performance and finally R&D capability of new-type bullets is insufficient," the report said.
The analysis is divided into two categories: light bullet (generic bullet) and heavy bullet (machine gun bullet).

The former is only suitable for individual weapons and squad light machine guns, while the latter can be used for the QBB-95 squad machine gun, QBU-88 sniper rifle and other firearms with the effective firing range of over 1,000 metres, state-run People's Daily reported.
Yao and Li noted that especially in recent years, to save expenses and costs, bullet manufacturers are small scale and have no drive for technological upgrading because bullet orders in peace are very small, whereas developed countries like the US are actively exploring and developing new-type bullets, the report said.