We can disagree here. My line of thinking is that, IF we believe that (pretty certain) the new PLA rifle is to be conventional, it won't look too different between various designs (CS/LR17 or not), there are not much outward differences can be made IMO, remind me again about the CJ10/YJ18 discussion
. So to be sure that the new PLA rifle is not related to CS/LR17, IMO would require us to know that the design teams are different. This is not easy to know, but possible because NORINCO's light arm institutes/factories are not very secretive. Wasn't a sniper rifle adopted by PLA was also shown in some exhibition? For example.
Oh I'm not suggesting that it's unprecedented for the PLA to adopt a new weapon that was first offered for export.
However in the case of their new service rifle in particular, the fact that they've been so secretive about its design despite us knowing that it should have gone through many trials to have settled on a final design and should have been in production for a while, makes me believe that if it
were the CS/LR17, we probably would've had pictures of it in 5.8mm by now.
I fully expect the final service rifle to have similarities to the CS/LR17, however given the preceding state of play WRT what we knew about the new service rifle, about how closely they were guarding it, and about there being various designs tested and investigated, I think the idea of the new service rifle being a CS/LR17 rechambered for 5.8mm should have been doubtful indeed.
What we're talking about here is somewhat different to the CJ10/YJ-18 discussion, because a rechambered CS/LR17 would still be a CS/LR17 in the same way that a HK417 is a rechambered HK416.
However an HK416 is still a different rifle to say a SIG516 to a CAR816 to a MK556 (so on and so forth) -- despite all of those rifles being 5.56mm and having similar action, being modern AR15 gas piston variants, and having very similar designs and so on.
I would be very surprised if the new service rifle didn't look very close to the CS/LR17, with similar features, similar configuration, similar (or even identical) type of action and so on.
But the new service rifle should be as different to CS/LR17 (which itself comes in multiple different calibre variants) as, say HK416 is to MK556. Very similar, easy to mistake for each other, but ultimately different rifles:
(look at the two below and able to tell which rifle is which immediately? I wouldn't be surprised if the new service rifle had a similar degree of similarity to CS/LR17)
Being offered for export while serving PLA shouldn't be an issue, QBZ-95 5.8mm vs. QBZ-97 5.56mm is an example. More interesting is that the export version bears PLA internal designation (QBZ).
I hope we can get a good look at the parade to clear things up. I know QBZ-95 may still be the main show, but at least we can have a better view of the submachine version.
Another thing, is QTS11 a modular design? If it is, could the rifle portion (without grenade launcher) be the PLA rifle? It would make good sense when both are in service.
Being offered for export while serving the PLA is definitely not an issue.
What is rarer is for the PLA to adopt a product that was
first offered for export and then adopting a variant of the export product for themselves. Of course that does still happen (e.g.: with certain systems like the Wing Loong drones, and for certain types of small arms), however for bigger ticket items like fighter jets or service rifles for mass use it tends to be rarer.
In the case of QBZ95, it would be like if the QBZ97 was first offered for export for two years and
then we received confirmation that the QBZ95 was adopted as the PLA service rifle.
edit: the rifle part of QTS-11 from my understanding is adapted from QBZ03.
My speculation for why the PLA wants a new service rifle is because they want one which is relatively modular, more ergonomic, and likely made of much better components than previous generations of rifles.
I wouldn't be surprised if the action of the new service rifle was heavily adapted from QBZ03, but apart from that there shouldn't be much overlap.
For QTS-11, adapting the rifle component part of the weapon as the new service rifle wouldn't really make sense because it won't offer the benefits of why the PLA likely want to achieve out of having a new service rifle.