Like many of the weapons used by Communist China, their sub-machine gun Type-50 had its origins in a weapon first produced by the Soviet Union, in this case the PPSH 41. As with most other combatant nations the Russians soon saw the need for mass production and the new gun was largely made of heavy gauge stampings, welded, pinned and brazed as necessary. The gun was of normal blowback mechanism and had the interior of the barrel chromed, a fairly common Soviet device. One of its distinctive features is that the front end of the perforated barrel casing slopes steeply backward from top to bottom, thus acting as a compensator to keep the muzzle down. In spite of its high cyclic rate of fire the gun was reasonably accurate and could be fired in single rounds if required.

The earliest versions had a tangent backsight but this was soon replaced by a simpler flip sight. The Chinese Communists received many of these guns in and after 1949 and started their own large scale manufacture of them in 1949 or 1950. Their version was essentially similar to its Russian counterpart, but had a somewhat lighter stock. It is also designed to take a curved box magazine though it will also fire the 71-round drum which was the standard magazine on the original Russian model. All Chinese versions have the two-range flip sight. The first locally-made weapons were crude in the extreme and gave the impression of having been made by apprentice blacksmiths (as perhaps they were). Nevertheless they worked, which was the first and only requirement of the Chinese.

The Type-50 was used extensively by the Chinese in the Korean war where it earned the inelegant but expressive nickname 'burp-gun' from its high rate of fire. Many were also used against the French in Indo-China in the 1950s.