Hanyang 88
bolt action rifle
The Type 88, sometimes known as Hanyang 88 or Hanyang Type 88 (Chinese: 漢陽八八式步槍) and Hanyang Zao (lit. 'Made in Hanyang'), is a Chinese-made bolt-action rifle, based on the German Gewehr 88. It was adopted by the Qing dynasty towards the end of the 19th century and was used by multiple factions and formations like those in the Republic of China, until the end of the Chinese Civil War.
The name of the rifle is derived from Hanyang Arsenal, the main factory that produced this rifle.
The rifle was due to be replaced as the standard Chinese rifle by the Chiang Kai-shek rifle. However, manufacture of the new rifle never managed to match demand,
and the Type 88 continued to be manufactured and to equip the National Revolutionary Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
History
This firearm was a rifle directly patterned on the German Gewehr 88 and was initially fielded by the New Armies of the Qing Dynasty. From the start of production in 1895, the Type 88 was modified twice to improve performance in 1904 and in 1930. It served as one of the standard battle rifles used by the National Revolutionary Army from its founding in 1925 until the late 1940s, after the end of World War II.
Japanese forces in China captured large numbers of the Hanyang 88s and issued them to second-line units and collaborationist Chinese troops. It was also used by the Chinese Communists, who not only used it during the same time period, but also during the Korean War. Some were reportedly supplied to the Viet Minh.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hanyang 88” as bolt action rifle. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as bolt action rifle. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q701796. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1904, 1930 and 1925.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hanyang 88” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.