Well of course no one really knows for sure, and those who have the best idea won’t be posting about it.
However, one thing I’d wager is that Chinese electronics are probably a lot closer to their US equivalents than the very difficult bits of hardware are. That likely puts the newer generations of Chinese surface combatants closer to their USN counterparts than their submarines are – although Chinese submarines have recently seen a leap forward with sharing of Russian submarine technology.
There does seem to be two camps if you ask anyone on the internet to compare the USN and PLAN:
- Group 1: The Great Chinese Fleet will surely prevail for the glory of the nation against the imperialist Americans, our latest technologies will surely prevail against the older American ships in the [propaganda officer to insert appropriate area of tension here] for the glory of the Party.
- Group 2: Everything from China is just plastic copies, everything in china breaks imediately! They have never fought a big navel war and we shuld bring back the battleships to show them hoos boss! USA! USA! USA!
Whilst the truth is of course somewhere between the two. Don’t write off Chinese technology, they’re now the second-biggest spender on R&D, and they’re also clearly serious about actually training their fleet – indeed they have commissioned an entire aircraft carrier primarily for training, which isn’t the sort of thing that an only-for-show force tends to do. Lack of combat experience is also a bit of a red-herring, as no one has fought a major naval conflict with the current generation of naval technology.
On the other hand, their major adversary has a huge head-start in technology, and selects leadership based on competence and individual initiative, as opposed to party loyalty.
