Wargaming.net has announced that seventeen new tanks from the Chinese tank line will be introduced to World of Tanks with the arrival of v8.2. There is no announced date for the next update at this point.

"The Chinese not only produced their own tanks, but also evolved their own unique designs through the modification and improvement of some of the best foreign machines on the planet," said Mike Zhivets, producer of World of Tanks. "The time has come for the Chinese to show their technical achievements. So, prepare to face the speed, hardiness and firepower of the best of People's Liberation Army!"

Find out more about the next update on the World of Tanks site.

Originally posted by Ozmodan
They had tanks???

They had WW2 era Russian tanks in the 50s and modified, reverse engineered WW2 Russian tanks during 60s till today.

During WW2 they had...umm..rikshaws?

So long as they stick to realism, and have the Chinese tanks randomly catch fire, because the factory that made them was too cheap to use the correct wire, and have the gun barrels randomly blow up, because even the defective ones are too valueable to throw away....

Ahhh yes the great tank battles of Asia, historians love to discuss the innovative tactics developed by tank commander Ching Chong during the Battle of Long Dong Valley.  The astonishingly advanced designs of the chinese tank easily led them to victory of the Japanese in countless battles on the asian mainland.

(these things did not happen....)

im confused why they are including china instead of japan for asia.  china really didnt last very long in ww2 :/ they used mostly out of date ww1 preww2 tanks from europe where as the japanese had alot of german tank tech and some italian if i recall right. 

seeing as japan steam rolled china in ww2 pretty quickly even with the canadian support forces there with the brits..  they would have been better off adding japan over china :/ imo

Not only did China use Soviet tanks during WW2, but after the Russian-Japanese nonaggression pact China made a deal with the US and gained US tanks. Among these were the M3A3, M5A1, and M4.

Though as stated the japanese line would have been better.. I would have love to seen a rendition of the O-I :

The O-I experimental superheavy tank had three turrets and weighed 120 tons, and required a crew of 11 men. It was 10 meters long by 4.2 meters wide with an overall height of 4 meters. The armor was 200 mm at its maximum, and the tank had a top speed of 25 km/h. This version had two gasoline engines, and was armed with 1 x 105 mm cannon, 1 x Type 1 37 mm (in a forward-mounted sub-turret), and 3 x Type 97 7.7 mm machine guns (one mounted in a forward sub-turret) while an ultraheavy version also mounted a Type 1 37 mm in a rear-facing sub-turret. It has been reported the one copy of the O-I was manufactured before the end of the war and was shipped to Manchuria, according to an engineer concerned with the project.^[14] No images of the O-I have been found, only some drawings are known to exist.

So will the tanks be constantly breaking down mid-battle since their parts are Made In China™?

Since they're mostly variations on existing tanks, I suspect this tank line (small as it is) was a case of "low-hanging fruit" that they banged out fairly quickly because it was easy, as opposed to putting out a Japanese line which needs to be built from the ground up.

I really doubt it took a lot of Dev time, much less significant time away from other projects.