T-72 tank chassis with Type96B style turret

According to discussions on the Chinese internet, this ‘Frankenstein’ tank appears to be Norinco’s latest effort to boost arms sales by retrofitting the basic Soviet-era T-72 chassis with a modern yet cost-effective turret. The intended market? Predictably, Africa and the Middle East friendlies.  

The T-72 is a Soviet-designed tank known for its reliability and use in many “organizations” around the world. China also produced the Type 90-II series, “influenced” by the T-72 design for export, thus retrofitting the Type90/Type96 families of turret to the chassis should not be too much of an engineering overhead.  

While there’s no explosive reactive armor (ERA) noted in the picture below, I am sure they can be also mounted on later on, if there’s budget left.