Fujian Tulou.
Gunpowder was invented in China more than a thousand years ago, with the first definitive written record of chemical formulae found in the mid-
11th century Song dynasty military
compendium Wujing Zongyao, and the very earliest possible reference dating to the
Eastern Han dynasty. During the
Ming and
Qing dynasties,
matchlock muskets were used in China, and the Chinese used the term "bird-gun" () to refer to muskets. From the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, until the death of
Mao Zedong in 1976, policy towards firearm possession was often class-specific, with rural peasants and urban proletarians being allowed to own firearms and form militias, while those considered class-enemies, such as landlords, were disarmed entirely. During the cultural revolution,
PLA soldiers were tasked with training militiamen with a variety of weapons, including anti-tank guns. One of the first formal regulations on firearms was introduced in 1957 by The Security Administration Punishment Act, which established government permission as a prerequisite for the purchase, production, and possession of firearms. After the end of the cultural revolution, a new, formalized legal system was established as part of
Deng Xiaoping's
Opening Up and Reform policy; in 1979, The Criminal Law of the PRC, which included further regulations on firearms, was first promulgated. It wasn't until 1996, that civilian firearm possession and usage was further restricted to specific professions — hunters and competitive sport shooters in particular and only in their intended areas of use. According to the
Chinese police, up until 2006, an underground gun-trading triangle in
Southwest China fed the Chinese gun market, with guns being manufactured in
Songtao and trafficked into
Xiushan and
Huayuan before reaching a national distribution scale. According to official figures, from June to September 2006 (six-month crackdown) the Chinese authorities confiscated 178,000 illegal guns, 3,900 tons of explosives, 7.77 million detonators and 4.75 million bullets. In 2007, a study released by the Geneva-based
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies estimated that around 40 million guns were owned by Chinese civilians, a gross over-estimation according to Chinese analysts. Throughout the 2000s,
The Wall Street Journal noted a rise of gun popularity in China. ==Specifications==