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Not all of the handguns made in China during the Warlord Era were made one at a time by individual artisan gunsmiths. A few models were produced on proper Western-style production lines. Almost all of these production pistols were direct copies of the FN 1900 and Mauser C96, except for this fascinating exception: the Shanghai Arsenal Model 1900 Pistol-Carbine (a collector designation and not an original name – we don’t know what the original designation was).
This pistol is essentially a hybrid of the two common Chinese copies. It uses the mechanical basis of the FN 1900, with that design’s unique breechblock and striker mechanism, plus the recoil spring above the barrel and the .32 ACP chambering. This is blended with a grip slotted for a Mauser-type stock, a 10-round magazine, a 500m fully functional tangent rear sight, and an extended (5.5 inch) barrel. Several thousand of these were made by the Shanghai Arsenal between 1916 and 1921, just as the height of the Warlord Era was about to begin.
These guns were well made and reliable, and have legitimate serial numbers and dates. However, there were also small-scale knockoffs of this domestic Chinese design made, and we have one such example to look at today along with the originals!
Now I’m really jealous – mostly jealous that you found .32 ACP available.
1) 500 meters for 32 ACP? Seriously? Didn’t anyone in China have `any practical experience with shooting pistols?
2) What’s the deal between Colt and Browning? Money, I would assume, but what are the details?
Mauser C-96 https://modernfirearms.net/en/handguns/handguns-en/germany-semi-automatic-pistols/mauser-c-96-eng/
most of the C-96 were fitted with ajustable rear sights, graduated up to 1000 meters
So in comparison to that 500 meter looks reasonable.
Such optimistic sights were not unusual in the West as well.
The history of Chinese armies before the 1920s is pretty ugly. As in extreme cowardice, the use of noise-makers instead of effective killing, and the destruction of civilian subsistence. Not surprised that corrupt warlord henchmen wanted to report that they were “fighting” by standing off at 500 meters. Might as well have put volley sights on their .32s.
The history of Chinese armies is much longer than the overall history of the West, and during this long history you find all examples of bravery and cowardice, order and disorder, acts of humanity and cruelty.
The pistol may be a dog, but that’s a Chinese lion on the grip panel.
I have a Chinese War Lord broom handle Mauser in 7.63 from one of the batches Navy Arms brought in a couple of decades ago. The writing is nonsensical and is more akin to the phonetic spelling of a female name in Arabic. The stripper clip feed lips are too shallow to accept a stripper clip, so I load it with single rounds into the mag, while holding the bolt to the rear. A hassle, but it does shoot. I just have to feed original rounds which have the power to operate the action bc they are powerful enough. Oddly, the front site which is a milled part of the barrel; iis canted to the right and there is no groove to speak of in the rear sight. Evidently no one planned to aim; maybe the pistol was a status symbol(?). I did two tours in South Asia and saw many tribal-made guns (semiauto AK in .303 British and in 7.62x25mm using Russian sky stick mags!).
“Russian sky stick mags”
What is that?
Sks mag? Sku mag? ??
People back then did this to pull it out of their belts quickly, if they didn’t then the bulge on the barrel could get caught in their cloth belts, the lack of sights could be because the pistol was used as a left handed weapon to provide only approximate fire suppression capability, you can see a similar approach in the famous Chinese war story hero Li Xiangyang – the right handed pistol had full sights for normal shooting, the left handed pistol had the sights filed off for quick draw and suppressive fire
My respect goes to Ian for paying attention to this ‘amusing’ (would ‘curious’ be a better word?) Chinese production. This is where true researcher’s mind comes to forefront. I do not consider myself a snob, but I’d scoff at it outright.
-How do I “join” this organization?
How do I join this organization?
Is it known if China had domestic ammunition manufacturing during this period?
Given that it was effectively mechanically the same as the Browning 1900 copies and fired the same round (+ presumably you could also adapt these for a shoulder stock). What was the advantage of beefing it up / making it larger ?
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