There was a time when western
countries were beating down China’s door attempting to sell it weapons.
AM General, the original
manufacturer of the ubiquitous Humvee tactical vehicle, attempted to
sell the Humvee to the Chinese military in the late 1980s. At the time, it was
claimed the Chinese thought the vehicles were too big and heavy, which was
probably true. Another issue was likely the high cost — at $21,000 each,
Humvees were not cheap and China was not yet rich.
The Persian Gulf War made the
previously low-key Humvee famous, and China studied the war extensively. It was
then that the People’s Liberation Army concluded that their “People’s War”
doctrine of overwhelming the enemy with numbers was well and truly dead, and
the future relied upon technology and mobility.
AM General had left behind a
free Humvee while wooing China, and several civilian models were
purchased under the guise of equipment for oil exploration. According to Car
News China, these vehicles, and the gift Humvee, were disassembled and
reverse-engineered. The result was the EQ2050 Mengshi tactical vehicle, which
is apparently no longer too big or too heavy for China.
Naturally there were complications
in making copies, but this time an American company appeared complicit. The
Mengshi’s diesel engine was built by U.S. firm Cummins, but the Tiananmen
Square arms embargo meant that American companies couldn’t sell China engines
destined for military vehicles. So, China imported the Cummins engines for a civilian
version of the Mengshi.
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