There was an old 1990s article on German assistance to Chinese Navy shipyard:
The article can no longer be accessed from the site, but its archived here:
I had first mentioned the article in 2007:
http://www.sinodefenceforum.com/world-armed-forces/article-f25t-naresuan-class-specs-3370.html
IMO the Jiangwei class was China's MEKO frigate and the 054 was China's La Fayette frigate. It would be foolish to discount European assistance in Chinese navy technology in 1980s-1990s, or non-military tech assistance & training provided by Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia after the Sino-Vietnam war in 1979. Japan provided various assistance and loans in 1970s-1980s, though it was also self serving with dependence on Chinese oil exports and hedge against possible renewed China-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. Ironically the pro-Taiwan factions in Japan was against providing loans to China's developmental projects at the time, but by 1990s Taiwanese businessmen were crawling allover Shanghai.
To say that China would be a giant NK without assistance from Soviets, US, and Japan is ignoring contributions from other countries toward China's development. In late 1970s, when Japan was debating on providing government loans to China, they were late to the game and competing with France, UK, Sweden, and Canada which had offered billions in loans. Anyways, this is OT and if we want to continue discussing it, we should move it to another thread.
