In most countries, the Russian-made AK is a treasured rarity and it’s usually much more expensive that those manufactured in other countries. The quantity of automatic rifles produced at those factories remains unknown, but it’s widely believed that China produced more Kalashnikovs than the Soviet Union, and my personal experience in the Middle East and Africa certainly confirms this. The most famous is Factory 386, but there are many more: 26, 66, and the list goes on and on. Very little is known about them, but each stamped its rifles with a crude symbol – the number of the factory. Over a dozen highly classified weapon manufacturing plants were built around the country. Without any control or oversight from the original manufacturer, China created an enormous system of small arms production. The consequences of this reckless technology transfer haunted the Soviet Union for years to come. The Soviet Union, which built AK weapons factories and trained Chinese engineers, now faced the fruits of its generosity. The conflict between the USSR and China reached its peak in 1968 with a brutal border conflict probably the first, but definitely not the last time when Soviet soldiers faced an adversary armed almost exclusively with Kalashnikov rifles. All military and technical assistance was terminated, and from that point the Chinese small arms industry developed independently without any influence from the Soviet Union. In the late 1950s, the relationship between China and the Soviets began to deteriorate, leading to the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s. In the early 1950s, when the Soviet Union started a massive program of technology transfer to China, no one could imagine that the Asian country would soon become the USSR’s biggest competitor on the international arms market.