Until very recently PLAN has been a capital-poor nation with masses of low wage labour to draw on. As circumstances change, the types of ships being built change. Type 022 belongs to the past, and Type 055 to the future. The rest are somewhere in between.
This is true to a certain extent -- and then it isn't. If you have enough ships, then you have enough ships. There is a reason the US Navy does not consist of 1000 3000-ton frigates despite their "far superior offensive and defensive area coverage, increase deployment options, and represent less eggs in one basket to an enemy force". Indeed, while most nations are scraping the bottom of the barrel just to afford the minimum number of ships required to maintain peacetime deployments and so favour almost anything that reduces per-unit cost, US Navy studies have repeatedly demonstrated the value proposition of larger combatants and it is this which has shaped the fleet over generations. Of course can reasonably argue that today's US Navy has swung too far in this direction and that it is in dire need of a modest frigate like the 054 series, but then I am not only referring to the excesses of the post-Cold War era, but to the preceding era that produced designs like Spruance, Arleigh Burke, and FFG-7 -- which, despite its domestic image, was not a small or particularly modest design in the global context of the time.