Why Do I See CF98, The Chinese Service Pistol, In My Nightmares?

In the US and Europe, many gun owners feel like a Glock or a SIG are pretty dull and boring pistols available to everyone. But when you venture to the Middle East and Africa, things change dramatically. “Normal” Western pistols become expensive and hard to find and you start seeing more and more Chinese handguns, the most popular being the CF-98.

I’ve seen plenty of those in both East and West Africa, and since Iraq recently started production of the same pistol under the name “Babylon”, I am sure we will see more of those sidearms all over MENA in the coming years.

Even now, when you shop for a (relatively) modern pistol in Somalia, CF 98 is essentially your best option. That is why I had to deal with this gun and actually failed to repair one, which still occasionally haunts me in my dreams. In my defense, I had zero spare parts available.

When I first field stripped the CF 98, it didn't look that crazy. But when I went just a little further, the question that came to my mind was “Why?”.

Unique features of CF98 design

Pistol design is not exactly rocket science, and the Browning-style tilting barrel is just as effective as it was 100 years ago. But in this case, the Chinese decided to go with a rotating barrel.

The CF 98 is probably the most mass-produced pistol with a rotating barrel in history. There are some other honorable mentions like the Italian Beretta PX4 or Russian GSH-18 which also have rotating barrels, but none of those pistols ever rivaled more conventional designs that have tilting barrels. Unpopular guns are unpopular for a reason.

In my experience, rotating barrel does not really give you any advantages, but adds extra parts (at least in this case) and the manufacturer has to precisely mill locking lugs on the barrel, making it more expensive to produce and more labor-intensive.

The CF 98 barrel has SEVEN locking lugs, one big one and six small ones, and if you ask me, that is seven too many for a pistol barrel. I can only imagine how much fine steel they waste milling those lugs at the factory.

This pistol has one more interesting feature, a fire control unit (FCU) which includes a trigger mechanism, hammer, safety and trigger itself. It is similar to an FCU of SIG P320 (M17).

But the P320 FCU allows you to upgrade the gun with different grip modules, adapting it for a particular shooter. So, to take advantage of the FCU, you need to manufacture changeable grip modules available for the end user.

I am no expert on Chinese guns, but I’ve never seen grip modules for CF 98. Perhaps I need to check out the latest offerings on Wish.com and AliExpress.

One more advantage of FCU is how easy it is to repair the gun. If something in the trigger mechanism is broken, you just swap the entire FCU and send the broken one up the supply chain. Sounds great. In theory…

That is exactly what happened with a CF 98 I had to repair, trigger mechanism problems. And not only could I not find a spare FCU, but I could not find any parts for this pistol in the country. And when you disassemble the FCU, you see how many parts it actually consists of.

Initially, the designers of CF98 could not decide which caliber they should go with. There were two options: the standard 9mm and the proprietary 5.8x21mm small-caliber high-velocity round. The second one was seemingly a better option: lighter, with a faster projectile and bigger magazine capacity (20 rounds).

At the end of the day, they decided to design the pistol in both calibers. And perhaps design features that made sense for the 5.8x21mm version did not make much sense for the 9mm.

By the year 2000, both pistols were ready for production after extensive trials that began in the early 90s. The official army designation of this handgun is QSZ 92.

However, pistols chambered for 5.8x21 ended up being less popular than expected: Chinese police units were concerned about overpenetration with a faster bullet and decided to stick with 9 mm.

The manufacturing capabilities of China made this pistol pretty popular, and if you plan to work in Africa or the Middle East, you better get familiar with it.