In
, big shrimp pop3 talked about some development history of 055; he also mentioned in the same post that 055 costs about 6 billion RMB. Someone asked him to clarify what he means by cost. He says it's the purchase price paid by PLAN for the ship. He said further that PLAN usually allows 5% net profit margin for the shipyard, which is included in the purchase price.
I'm not sure if this price includes R&D cost. If the 6 billion RMB include design cost, then it probably includes at least some R&D cost. I tend to think it does not. For one, the purchase price does not appear to change with purchase quantity; for another, I remember we had discussed a few months ago about an exposure from some insider about the bidding for the contract of designing the AESA radar for 052C. In it, the winner institute got 120 million RMB R&D + 20 million RMB for infrastructure investment. So it seems that R&D is budgeted separately. Of course, that story happened over twenty years ago, things may or may not stay the same today.
Therefore even if we allow for additional cost of R&D, an 055 costing around 1 billion USD is still very, very competitive.