The development history of tanks in Chen Ke's timeline was intimately linked to Germany.

As a transmigrator, Chen Ke did not know much about tanks. He had heard of the legendary T-34, as well as Germany's WWII Tigers and Panthers — through movies, mostly. As for the specifics of gun calibers, the triad of armor, mobility, and firepower data — he knew none of it.

Therefore, Chen Ke's greatest influence on Chinese tank development was this: he prevented the "multi-turret heresy" from running rampant in China.

From the very beginning, Chinese tank development was oriented directly toward single-turret designs.

After World War I, Germany, bound by the Treaty of Versailles, was forbidden from conducting tank research and development. During WWI, Germany had produced its first tank, the A7V. After the war, the associated design personnel were disbanded along with the defeated military under the Versailles Treaty. Most of these disbanded engineers were recruited and received by intelligence operatives sent to Germany by Chen Ke. When China and Germany began their secret military cooperation, the ambitious Germans placed their tank research base directly in China — whereas in the other timeline, that base was in the Soviet Union. Thus from the very start, Chinese tank design bore a heavy German stamp. Later, due to technological exchange, Soviet tank design also had a significant influence on Chinese tanks.

As early as the mid-to-late 1920s, China and Germany jointly designed the first post-WWI generation of tanks: the five-ton T1, though this was purely experimental — only three were built for testing. The 1920s through the 1930s were an era of rapid tank technology development, with all manner of suspension systems being invented. Since no country yet fully appreciated the tank's battlefield role and importance, these new suspension technologies were not classified. China was able to easily acquire design documents — and even tank samples — from various nations: the famous American Christie tank, the British Vickers tank. And the Soviet BT-2 tank came to China through a three-way technology exchange among China, the Soviet Union, and Germany.

The years from the late 1920s to Hitler's rise to power were a golden age of excellent relations among China, the Soviet Union, and Germany. Tank technology development among the three was deeply intertwined.

During this golden period, China successively developed fifteen different tank prototypes for testing and validation, numbered T1 through T15, with weights increasing from the initial five tons all the way to fifteen.

Despite the many prototypes, only four tank models were approved for mass production and military deployment from the early 1930s through 1938. These were: the seven-ton "Mouse" ultra-light tank, the seven-ton "Cat" ultra-light tank, the ten-ton "Fox" light tank, and the fifteen-ton "Wolf" light tank. Influenced by movies from his future life, Chen Ke liked naming his tanks after animals. Posterity accordingly gave this era's Chinese tanks an apt nickname: the "Animal Rangers." And within the Chinese Army itself, armored troops jokingly referred to themselves as "Chairman Chen's Zoo."