[13] Production started in 1956 at State Factory 66 but was eventually handed over to Norinco and PolyTech, who continue to manufacture the rifle primarily for export.

Whereas the Stalin era typically saw only old or obsolete arms provided as aid, under Khrushchev active Soviet equipment and production technology was given instead.

Many of these rifles found their way to battlefields in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East and were used alongside other Kalashnikov pattern weapons from both the Soviet Union as well as the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe.

[15] When relations between China and North Vietnam crumbled in the 1970s and the Sino-Vietnamese War began, the Vietnamese government still possessed vast quantities of Type 56 rifles in its inventory.

[citation needed] In the mid-1980s, Sri Lanka began to replace its British L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle (SLR) and German HK G3s with the Type 56-2.

[15] In 1987, Michael Ryan used a legally owned Type 56 rifle, and two other firearms, in the Hungerford massacre in the United Kingdom, in which he shot 32 people, 17 of whom died.

The attack led to the passage of Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which bans ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles and restricts the use of shotguns.