The same shipyards that uses modern technology to build civilian ships to Western standard of quality will be doing so for military ships. And from all I have read, the latest 052B/C are built to higher quality than the Sovs.
From where you have read about the quality of 052B/C, I would like to read it about too..???
But Fitz is partially right. There are/have been quite alot of cases where to quality of chinese shipbuilding/designing is rather poor. Add to those already mentioned, for example the chinese build Romeos which were bought by Egyptians had their engines wore out during their delivering voyage and the first 052 Luhu class vessel had its comparament for its LM-2500 gasturbines wrongly meassured that intially the turbines didn’t fit to the room.
But it should be noted that the proplems have mainly been on the 052 and 025T which were both the very first chinese “modern” shipdesings. Actually the 025T was given priority over the 052 which however being earlier design had to wait for the exportships to be launched first. It’s completely natural that if you are just starting to do something in a field and scale previously unknown to you that you start that road with shake steps. None is master at birth. Chinese modern shibuilding has been around less than 20 years so even today its no wonder nor shame to have issues, it would be miracle if there weren’t any.
And yeas chinese shipbuilding quality has improved, its also quite natural that it does. And yeas you can roughly use the civil-sector as a indicator of military shipquality (tough only roughly) but the real point is how much? Altough china has improved, I doupt that the level is still no way near the highest quality that is out there. Like the mentioned 052B/C being higher quality than pr. 956 (which I personally doupt) could be true but who said soviet warshipbuilding quality of the 80’s was anyway near the current western standarts??
Sadly many chinese internetwarrior thinks that china is some sort of world class player in modern high-standart warship shipbuilding/designing when in reality china is still a noob in that field, learning to do stuff and taking small and safe steps at the time. IMO china is actually doing wise moves and not rushing to mass-producing inmature designs like certain another superpower did when it was in the same situation when looking the shipdevelopment sector.
One thing however should be noted when talking about the chinese shipquality. That is the apparent maintaining skills of PLAN to keep those poor quality ships in service. Almoust all chinese warships have seen quite extensive careers and I doupt that the PLAN Jianghu’s and Romeos were any better in craftmanships than their export counterparts. Still PLAN have managed to kept them in service as any other navy with their large warships. The absolute triumph of this was the Ex WW-II-era soviet Type 7 class destroyer. Those ships were famous of them being poorly designed and build and many broke up in the soviet hands during the war. Still China manged to keep those ships in service for nearly 50 years! I quess wha the chinese lack in building quality they make up with maintenance and repair skills.
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