My beloved, my grail rifle, you've made the mistake of letting me ramble about this surprisingly poorly known assault rifle.

The idea was to create a rifle that'd combine the longer range accuracy and bayonet fighting ability (this was an important aspect of PLA doctrine at the time) of the SKS but the select fire and detachable magazines of the AK. In addition, there was a growing sentiment during the Sino-Soviet Split that China was too dependant on Soviet aid, and there was a degree of embarrassment that they did not have an indigenously designed rifle.

The Type 63 was the end result, something of a mishmash of both SKS and AK. It resembles the SKS and even uses the same wooden stock, but unlike the tilting bolt SKS, the Type 63 uses a rotating bolt based off the AK design. It features a fire selector and bolt hold open,

The rifle was adopted in 1963 and began serial production sometime within the next few years. Initial field tests provided glowing results, stating the rifle was more reliable, more accurate, and more controllable than the Type 56 AK. Much like China did with the Type 56 SKS throughout the 1960s, various tweaks were made to the design over the years to improve production output. By the late 60s however, more and more reports came in of these rifles suffering various issues, cracking receivers, premature parts wear, etc. Quality control was believed to have gotten worse due to both these alterations, as well as supply chain disruptions during Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Reputation of these soured and many PLA units began reverting back to their tried and true AK and SKS rifles. Production ended around 1978. They were exported to various allies of China throughout the 1960s onward, namely Vietnam, Albania, Afghanistan, and North Korea. There are a few videos online of these in various Vietnamese arsenals, so they're not completely out of service yet.

Fun fact, there's a underfolding stock variant of this, which looks a lot like a Mini-30.