Chinese Lancer Tank image - M.P

Throughout the 121 years of its existence as of August 2048, the Chinese People's Liberation Army had overseen the development of five generations of battle tanks. It was during the development of the third generation in the 1990s - following the ZTZ-59 and ZTZ-80 which to this day continue to serve in upgraded form as the "Battlemaster" series - that Chinese engineers produced a radical design that could be best described as a fusion of East and West.

Unbeknownst to the Americans and Russians, elite spies of the Chinese Ministry of State Security Technical Support Unit 520 had stolen the sensitive technological information of their latest tanks through a combination of honey trap spy tactics and early computer hacking. As a result, the prototype WZ-137 "Lancer" was one of the most technologically advanced prototype tanks of its time.

Its hull was build from a composite of steel, ceramics and depleted uranium much like the American M1 Abrams and featured a distinct wedge shape to further improve its effective armour thickness. The tank's turret incorporated several features that were closely replicated from the Russian T-90, such as a high-powered 125mm smoothbore cannon and a new type of explosive reactive armour.

However, the Lancer's impressive qualities came at a staggering production cost, which is why the PLA selected one of its competitors, the WZ-123, which would enter service as the ZTZ-99 in the early 2000s. The Lancer's existence has since been covered up in order to preserve the secrecy of Technical Support Unit 520, which would later form the nucleus of the Black Lotus cyber-commando unit.