Re: what Lion, Plawolf mentioned regarding armor protection for the Z-10...
I'm not going to be euphemistic here, China's ground military equipment at least is known for being underarmored, from tanks, IFVs and APCs, to all sorts of supposedly armored cars, to body armor for its troops and paramilitary forces.
We at least know that the big bottleneck in China's aircraft industry is with engines, I don't know if there is a parallel problem with engines for ground and/or naval equipment. This may be the actual cause of an underarmoring tendency in China's military equipment, or it may be an exacerbating factor to an existing underarmoring tendency due to resource constraints or simply a tactical habit.
I think underarmoring is at the level of a systemic problem for China, combined with issues in developing powerful aircraft engines I would not bet on the Z-10 being able to reliably withstand anything heavier than 7.62mm rounds.
That is a perception problem associate with old china. China is no more the same as 20 years ago. It's starting to get more and more advanced. There is a limit you can go for under armour. China has its own criteria when comes to armour. I give you a good example is the ZTZ-99G. This tank is estimate at a whopping 54 tons. The Russian T-99 is at most 50tons. The Chinese one is by no means a big tank plus it's using auto loader, meaning its doesn't require the bigger space compare to western tank. More or less tells you the level of protection PLA emphasize for it. PLA always try to use American standard as a guideline. I do not think they will settle for less. As I say again WZ-10 is not as big as apache. It doesn't need an engine as powerful as it...
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