Even if you build 6 to 9 destroyers a year, your total ship fleet may not be that high.
You expect to have ships decommissioning. It may appear that the PLAN is growing from nothing because no one pays attention to the old ships anymore, or they are so technologically obsolete, they are regarded as zero value in modern naval warfare. These old ships are going away one by one, the Ludas, the Jianghus, the Jiangweis. Your total number may not be growing as fast as it looks when decommissions are factored, only that your fleet looks a lot newer. There is a difference between the PLAN retiring ships and the USN which looks to retire ships soon. With the PLAN you're retiring Ludas, which are post WW2 design destroyers hacked with short range SAMs and antiship missiles, while in the next few years, the USN might have to retire Ticonderoga class cruisers, and already they are debating about not updating a number of them due to cost. The PLAN is retiring ships that have no longer has any combat value, other than training and coast guard patrols, while the USN is retiring a number of still powerful warships.
Build growth may start to look more like build replacement once a number of post Luda type ships begin decommissioning.
After the Ludas are retired, I suppose the last of them are next year, you would go on to the next class. So you're looking at the range of 2 x 052, 2 x 052B, 1 x 051B, 2 x 051C and the 4 x Project 956. As some of these ships have just been MLU'ed and in preparations to be done so, the MLUs may add another 10 years of like, although in my opinion, even these MLUs are already technically obsolete by the next decade. I also think that some of these ships, like the two already stripped down 054 and the two already stripped down 052B might still be in danger of having their MLUs being cancelled, and it will be the end of these four, though in -my- subjective opinion, the odds are still likely the upgrades will push through. If I were policy maker, I would be more ruthless and scrap all four ships. Let the Guangzhou and the Wuhan be reborn as a new 052DL or 055. The Maanshan and the Wengzhou I would turn into experimental frigates to test new technologies.
In the next five years, I would think the Type 052 class, both the Harbin and the Qingdao, would go. They might even go earlier, and pass their names to new 052DL or 055.
A sudden acceleration in decommissionings can see both Type 051C, the Shenyang and Shijiazhuang, go the way to their end. I don't know if these ships will still be MLU'ed. Their S-300 based RIF-M systems are aging, literally, electronically, mechanically and technologically. These are still late Cold War stuff. Both ships still have the previous ECM and ESM systems that were issued before the Type 052C overhauled the PLAN's EW systems with the introduction of the modular Type 726 ESM and ECM systems. Steam engines are not the most popular with the PLAN these days, they are a pain to maintain and man. My verdict. Both these ships have to go, even prematurely, and pass their names and pennants to 052DL or 055.
136 Hanzhou is in trials and 137 Fuzhou is already being refitted. But I think these ships are already obsolete other than being YJ-12 launching platforms, which is the same case as 167 Shenzhen. I will give these ships another five years, optimistically. Logically, the PLAN should think about retiring them prematurely even after the refits. 138 Taizhou and 139 Ningbo, both ships still active, should have their MLU plans cancelled and look for premature retirement, and the names of both ships passed on to new 052DL or 055.
Who knows, the budget for making surface warships can suddenly be reallocated to say, a surge in building nuclear attack submarines. I may expect something like that to happen if the Type 095 worked out alright.
Money can also be allocated to say, a large midlife refitting program for the Type 054A. In my opinion, the type is already obsolete but there are ways within the PLAN's component library to upgrade the ship with AESA radars, and better antiship missiles including YJ-12 or a new generation antiship missile.
I can see the potential for a mid life refit of the Type 052C. Don't expect to see an integrated mast however. The main Type 346 radars can be overhauled and replaced with new modules. The back end systems can be replaced with something with more up to date computing power and higher speed networking. The YJ-62 antiship missiles can be replaced by YJ-12 or a new generation anti ship missile.
If you have so many surface warships, what are they going to do in the meantime? You will end in a situation where the ships are competing for missions or they will get under deployed, where they will end up sitting in ports doing nothing. You better think of reasons to give these ships, these crews and officers something to do, and you're going to end up looking more and more like the USN doing patrols here doing FONOPs there and god knows what of any real value.
