Norinco

China North Industries Corporation was established in 1980 as the trading and export arm of the People’s Republic’s ordnance industry, consolidating the output of numbered state arsenals that had until then reached foreign buyers only through the state itself. Much of what it exports was designed and first built decades before the corporation existed, so an entry attributed to it here can carry an introduction year earlier than the company’s own founding date: the arsenal that made the arm in 1956 was absorbed, not replaced.