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The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) PLA (People Liberation Army) first experienced armor operation in the last part of World War II, when its Fourth Field army captured a number of Japanese tanks in Northern China. Those were the Japanese Type 95, 97 and 94 light tanks. The number of tanks in service with the PLA increased a great deal by August 8, 1945, after the Operation Autumn Storm, where the Soviet army conducted a lighting strike against the Japanese KwanTung Army in Manchuria. After the surrender of 600,000 Japanese troops, the Soviet handed all their captured Japanese weapons, including over 700 artillery pieces and more then 100 tanks, to the PLA. The PLA Fourth Field Army, under the command of Lin Biao, operated in that area and used those captured weapons in the Chinese Civil War between the Chinese Communist (CCP) and the Nationalist (KMT) that followed.

Lin Biao and other PLA generals of the PLA Fourth Field Army never commanded more than 40,000 troops at one time before the Civil war. They had to learn how to use those new weapons in the battlefield the hard way; the early defeats in the Manchuria Campaign were their lessons. The KMT soon over extend themselves and the Manchurian Campaign turn into PLA's first triumph of the Civil War. It saw the destruction, surrender or desertion 400,000 of KMTs finest troop when the campaign was over. Only 20,000 Nationalist troops escaped, evacuated by sea from south of Liaoning. When the PLA captured Shenyang on October 28, 1947, a further 150 artillery pieces, 22 tanks, and 600 vehicles were added to the PLA Fourth Field Army's arsenal. At the end of the Manchurian Campaign, the victorious PLA Fourth Field Army had 76 operational tanks, 150 armored vehicles and over a thousand artillery pieces, yet not one independent armor formation. Those operational tanks and armored vehicles were divided up into eight armored artillery divisions. Tanks were used as self-propelled artillery for the PLA Fourth Field Army. Due to lack of experience in armored warfare, Japanese and KMT POW's were continuing to operate those tanks at gunpoint for a short period of time