The Panda tank's cross-country trafficability problems were largely solved by widening its tracks, but the vehicle was simply too heavy. Old bridges couldn't bear the weight, and bridges became the greatest enemy for deep-penetration rapid-insertion missions.

The best solution was light tanks and amphibious tanks. But both had armor too thin, making them extremely vulnerable to destruction — especially when operating without infantry support in the jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia, where light tanks' fragility was brutally exposed. During the three-month Southeast Asian Liberation War, the Chinese Army charged forward in a headlong rush, but still lost a significant number of light tanks — the majority destroyed by enemy anti-tank infantry or anti-tank guns with ease. Southeast Asia's complex terrain was practically a natural anti-tank zone, utterly unsuited for long-range armored strikes. Lone tanks without infantry cover easily fell into enemy anti-tank team ambushes and were picked off. Mounting infantry on the tank's exterior to protect it could reduce the enemy infantry threat, but placed the mounted soldiers in extreme danger.

The armored vehicle that performed best in this war was the Kangaroo armored personnel carrier. Weighing 11 tons, fully tracked, engine forward, it could carry nine personnel (3 crew + 6 infantry), armed with one 12.7mm heavy machine gun or one 20mm autocannon. Its armor could stop machine gun rounds and shell fragments. Based on postwar battlefield feedback, multiple weapon configurations and new turrets were developed — including twin 12.7mm machine guns, machine gun shields, and an onboard mortar.

In Southeast Asian assault operations, the Kangaroo accompanied the Wolf and Fox light tanks throughout the entire campaign, performing outstandingly. It not only safely carried friendly troops through breakthroughs against enemy machine gun positions, but in complex jungle terrain it also provided infantry cover and fire support for accompanying friendly tanks.

This fully-tracked, front-engine armored personnel carrier could actually be regarded as the prototype of the modern infantry fighting vehicle. Its existence was entirely the credit of the transmigrator Chen Ke.

Although the British also had infantry tank development plans, their early equipment — the Matilda, Valentine, Churchill, and similar "infantry tanks" — were infantry tanks in name only. In essence, they merely served as mobile obstacles standing in front of infantry to shield them from bullets. Infantry still had to charge on foot behind the tanks rather than riding into the assault. While Britain, America, and Germany all developed half-tracks to address the problem of infantry accompanying tanks, half-tracks lacked sufficient protection. During armored assaults under concentrated enemy fire, the half-tracks themselves were highly vulnerable. It was not until the later stages of the war that Britain and Germany began converting older infantry tanks — restructuring engine layouts, removing turrets to expand interior space, cramming in more soldiers more safely. But these were ultimately improvised measures, not purpose-designed infantry fighting vehicles.

The development of infantry fighting vehicles was really a conceptual issue, a matter of doctrine rather than technology — it was simply a question of whether people thought of it. Drawing on fragments of memory from watching television news in his past life, Chen Ke had articulated this concept of troop-carrying assault vehicles very early on.

After the Southeast Asian campaign concluded, at the Armored Forces Committee's lessons-learned conference, Tianjin Design Bureau chief designer Gao Bupang proposed an idea: in terms of its basic dimensions, the Kangaroo infantry carrier and the Fox tank were nearly identical. Why not use the Kangaroo chassis to develop a front-engine light tank — or simply bolt a Fox turret onto the Kangaroo and use it as a combat tank? This carried an additional advantage: using the same chassis meant front-line units wouldn't need to stockpile spare parts for two similarly performing vehicles. This also met the "Universal Chassis Specification" standard.

This proposal created a sensation at the conference. Second Bureau chief designer Lin Pingzhi slammed the table and confronted Gao Bupang in an open brawl on the spot. As a designer, he understood perfectly that Gao Bupang's proposal was essentially a death sentence for the Second Bureau's Fox tank — and even the Wolf's fate was in jeopardy.

If the proposal passed, the Fox and Wolf — the Second Bureau's two signature flagship products — would face immediate obsolescence and termination.

Rumors circulated: Gao Bupang had harbored precisely this malicious intent. His terrible relationship with Second Bureau chief designer Lin Pingzhi was already common knowledge. The root cause, allegedly, was that Lin Pingzhi had stolen Gao Bupang's girlfriend in university — though, of course, this remained an unconfirmable industry rumor.

While the Armored Forces summary conference was still in session, two vehicles modified to Gao Bupang's specifications had already been driven into the Armored Forces Bureau compound. One was a Kangaroo APC fitted with a 37mm gun turret. The other was precisely what he had proposed: a Kangaroo chassis with front-mounted engine, lowered profile, and a 47mm tank gun.

Though Gao Bupang's talent in tank design may have been inferior to Lin Pingzhi's, his forward-looking vision for tank development was clearly a notch above his lifelong rival's.

Every mission a light tank could perform, the Kangaroo series could do. The troop-carrying mission that light tanks could not perform was the Kangaroo's specialty. His proposal fully complied with the "Universal Chassis Specification." Once the prototypes appeared, the Armored Forces Committee's choice was obvious.

Since these were products redeveloped on a mature chassis, Gao Bupang's two prototypes passed testing easily — in reality, he had been preparing for this day for nearly a year. The derivative armed with a 47mm tank gun was later designated the Thylacine tank.

The Kangaroo series' surprise rise not only condemned the Fox and Wolf — two active-service light tanks — to oblivion, but also rendered the Second Bureau's newly completed 20-ton tank obsolete overnight. With the Thylacine infantry tank and the Panda, Gao Bupang finally completed his revenge against Lin Pingzhi, holding his head high at last.

The first-generation Kangaroo infantry vehicle carried nine personnel with relatively thin armor. As wartime needs evolved, its chassis was continuously improved and developed. Variants advanced through five generations of upgrades, passenger capacity increased to twelve, and armor protection evolved from light to medium and even heavy levels, with weight rising from an initial eleven tons to twenty-five tons by the war's end. Armament progressed from a single 12.7mm machine gun through 20mm autocannon, 30mm cannon, 76mm light howitzer, and 90mm light howitzer.

Near the war's end, the Tianjin Design Bureau's front-engine Rhinoceros tank lost its competition against old rival Guangzhou's Elephant tank. The indomitable Gao Bupang used the Rhinoceros chassis to develop a 40-ton heavy infantry fighting vehicle, which passed acceptance and received orders. Unfortunately, the war's end meant the Rhinoceros — including postwar production — produced only 150 units before the line closed.

The Kangaroo chassis was structurally simple and easy to manufacture. Ordinary tractor and automotive factories required only minor modifications to produce them, without competing with medium tank production lines. This manufacturing advantage, combined with enormous front-line demand, drove extremely high production numbers. Chinese production alone exceeded 50,000 units, making it one of the most popular armored vehicles among front-line troops.

Beyond carrying infantry into front-line assaults, the chassis proved an excellent light artillery platform. Over twenty derivative vehicle types were developed. By mid-war, aside from a small number of Panda-derived "Bear" variants mounting 105mm howitzers for direct-fire missions, all front-line self-propelled 105mm howitzers were mounted on Kangaroo chassis. As for "Chairman Chen's Organ Pipes" — the twenty-tube 122mm multiple rocket launcher — the Kangaroo chassis was its sole platform.

The Kangaroo's front-engine layout gave it exceptionally spacious interior volume. Beyond carrying troops, it served as an excellent ammunition supply vehicle.

The Thylacine tank — one of its combat derivatives — had a fighting weight of 16 tons, later increased to 18 tons after armor thickening. Due to the front-mounted engine making the bow heavy, the turret was shifted rearward behind the hull centerline for balance. The front-engine layout also severely limited frontal armor thickness — an inherent, unavoidable deficiency of front-engine tanks.

Japan also obtained a production license for the Kangaroo series. For resource-poor Japan, the Kangaroo could perfectly execute both troop transport and tank combat missions. The first-generation Kangaroo's relatively simple structure meant Japan's weaker industrial base could produce them without difficulty. After receiving the production license, Japan immediately sentenced the recently imported Fox tank to death.

The Kangaroo's success later went to Gao Bupang's head, and he became stubbornly fixated on front-engine layouts. When he next competed against his old rival Lin Pingzhi for the new-generation main battle tank, his Rhinoceros tank suffered yet another crushing defeat to Lin Pingzhi's "Elephant."

The Thylacine light tank — designed for reconnaissance and low-intensity tank combat — saw 2,000 units produced. The majority went to the Soviet Union, making it China's last light tank of WWII. Through the long and arduous tank battles against Britain and America, Chinese armored forces' key lesson was that as both sides' main battle tanks grew ever heavier, light tanks had no place on the WWII battlefield. The Soviets chose the Thylacine primarily for its feature of allowing crew dismount from the rear hull — cramming in up to seven personnel for accompanying tank assaults, essentially treating it as an up-armored Kangaroo infantry vehicle.

Gao Bupang's Thylacine tank is regarded as the final swan song of China's WWII light tanks. As for its successor, the "Red Panda" — that was nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing, a fraud wearing a false label.