Re: Type 95 assault rifle
The PLA has always gone out of its way to make its standard issue kit non-compatible with foreign standard issue equipment.
The choice of the 5.8mm was to make it different from NATO and Russian standard small cal. as much as it was because of the 5.8's own ballistic properties.
The PLA has always been a defensively oriented force, and they do not want any invaders to be able to easily use captured Chinese weapons or supplies.
Now that the times have changed of course, but old habits die hard, and I really cannot see the PLA making large purchases of foreign optics as expensive as some of the rifles they are mounted on for all its troops, or even its elite troops.
They will get some in for study, and maybe try and come up with a cheap Chinese made model to secure supplies and keep costs down.
But frankly, the PLA has far more important things to spend their money on than fancy optics for the grunts.
It's more due to political satire of the time than due to a "passive defense" strategy. Until the end of Mao's era, China was swept by the "Great Leap Forward" and then the "Cultural Revolution", ok those are known facts but most importantly was the feverish drive for "Chinese innovation" and "go the Chinese way" on all fronts, everything is politically driven not by rationale, and that affects the military-industrial complex as well.
Such chaos resulted in some failed products, like the Type 63 rifle - they tried to merge the merits of SKS and AK-47, but plagued by quality control problems due to un-professionalism (set forth by the political satire of the time, in the name of innovation) at the manufacturing level, such as un-authorized modification of the schematics and manufacture procedures.
And in fact, should the Soviet invades (until the collapse of the USSR, it was a stark reality the Chinese braced themselves for all the time), they can easily utilize the ammo cache of virtually all calibers, artillery munitions, and spare parts of AK-47 (alas, not for AK-74 and 5.45mm ammunition it uses). Now how you explain that?
Even so, despite the project initiated right in the middle of the Cultural Revolution era, it somehow managed to steer away from the chaos (most notable would be drop the political-correct 5.81mm and go for 5.8mm) and by 1978 it has been finalized as the next-generation of small-caliber munition for the PLA.
