 The Huai Army had received limited training by Western military advisors; numbering nearly 45,000 troops, it was considered the best armed military unit in China.Although the Chinese had established arsenals to produce firearms, and a large number of them had been imported from abroad, 40 per cent of Chinese troops at the outbreak of the war were not issued with rifles or even muskets.Instead they were armed with a variety of swords, spears, pikes, halberds, and bows and arrows.