Looks like QBZ-191 didn’t met a lot of users expectation here. If PLA was trying to overhaul infantry equipment and modernize everything from ground up, then why did they cheapen up & compromized on different aspect of new rifle for cost cutting for few billions? Its not like they are buying expensive rifles from other nation like India. Heck China give way more money as donation to poor nations for various reasons. Even Turkish new rifle looks more advanced than QBZ-191, while Turkey’s economy is in shambles. This doesn’t look good for world’s 2nd richest nation.
I think there's a difference between meeting "expectations of people who want a rifle with all of the trimmings" and "expectations of a service rifle meant to be issued to the world's largest standing military (and other services like armed police".
When you are designing a rifle intended to be used for a nation that large, used by that many service personnel, small design decisions and extra features do end up costing you quite a lot in terms of procurement, ease of manufacture, and depending on the design decision it can influence upkeep as well.
The only "issues" with QBZ-191 that I see, are:
1. non free floated handguard
2. single sided charging handle
3. reciprocating charging handle
I would say that 2. and 3. are not entirely fair criticisms. I believe 2. and 3., if implemented would result in greater cost and more difficulty in manufacture -- and more importantly, I believe 2. and 3. are not features that the PLA brass desired either. It is not unreasonable to say that 2. and 3. would be quite a deviation from the standard PLA manual of arms that they've been used to since the Type 81 and 03 in terms of conventionally configured rifles. That isn't to say the PLA are unwilling to change -- the QBZ 95 as a bullpup, and the bolt release on the QBZ 191, show that clearly there are some things they believe to be worthwhile changing for.
As for 1., I think a proper free floated handguard issued as a standard rifle is likely going to be excessive for your standard soldier. A free floated handguard is useful for a few things, but perhaps most notably it is for IR lasers/aiming devices. Your average soldier in the PLA is not going to be equipped with such equipment. There are of course some benefits for accuracy as well to having a free floated handguard, but again, your average soldier probably isn't going to be able to make full use of that bleeding edge improvements in accuracy when equipped with just the standard 3x prism sight. In the case of the standard QBZ-191, they've clearly considered the effect of their polymer HG solution on stability which is why they've taken so much lengths to have a forward iron sight housing that helps to stabilize the HG with the gas block. Not as good as a proper FF HG, but it does mean it was a conscious decision.
Then there is the issue of cost. A proper FF HG would have to be milled and machined, meaning it will be more expensive by a decent margin compared to the standard 191's polymer handguard. If money was no object, then perhaps they could do it. But money is most certainly finite, and the ability of the average soldier to effectively make use of the benefits of a FF HG is even more finite. So I can understand why this feature was omitted.
Fortunately, the QBZ-191 design means that they can quite easily produce upgrade kit for existing QBZ-191s by changing the barrel nut and changing the handguard to a FF HG. Or they can design and produce a QBZ-191 variant with FF HG -- which they've already really done with the QBU-191 that features a longer and heavier barrel and a FF HG. The design of the QBZ-191 means producing an upgrade kit or a designing a new variant of it with a new FF HG is very easy to do. However it depends on the need.
Personally, I think that going forwards once the standard QBZ-191s are more common place and widely issued, it would make sense to produce either an upgrade kit or produce new factory fresh variants of QBZ-191, to give it a new FF HG and new barrel nut (basically just a shortened QBU-191 handguard).
Such rifles would become standard fit for SOF/TZBD, rapid response units, airborne, maybe recon elements of normal brigades, who would be equipped to actually adequately make best use of a FF HG.
But would giving a FF HG to everyone be needed or cost effective? Probably not.
Personally I think the QBZ-191 has the right combination of features, and the selected omissions are reasonable. Assuming it performs kinematically in the way the PLA wants it to, it seems like a winner of a rifle design to me.
And the QBU-191 in particular seems like it should be an excellent DMR that can double as a HBAR, as well as a vision of what a more optimized QBZ-191 could look like.
