During the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, China captured samples of the Soviet-designed Dragunov sniper rifle, which it copied as the Type 79. Due to immature gunsmithing techniques its firing pin could break from metallurgy issues and problems copying the PSO-1 4x scope made it unable to handle the recoil of firing its rounds. These issues were addressed in the upgraded Type 85, but the PLA still used standard ball ammunition rather than specialized sniping cartridges, resulting in lower accuracy. These shortfalls led to development of a new sniper rifle when China started development of a new cartridge for machine guns in the early 1990s.