A construction holiday of a few years does seem a bit abnormal after they've just launched 10 major combatants in a year.
Wouldn't it have been a better decision to maintain a slower rate of production on the lines which are ending their run now, in order to ensure proper supply of trained personnel for their follow up construction?
A sudden hiccup of 2 or more years would certainly displace capacity and resources quite vigorously.
Agreed. I feel like we are missing something, either technical difficulties, or severely lacking in trained personnel, or a big leap in capability is expected so they'll be producing entirely new platforms in a few years instead of variants/upgrades.
Or.. maybe the CCP really doesn't like to move forward too quickly, or take any risks, so they'll slowly absorb all knowledge before pursuing any more large ships. Idk which is most likely.
I think both of you have it the wrong way around.
IMO it is launching 10 major combatants in a year is what is abnormal, and is a result of happy coincidence of 052D production rate reaching its peak and ongoing 055 production.
Whether it would have been a better idea to maintain a slower and continuous rate or production before moving onto the next generation of surface combatant is debatable.
It could depend on when the industry would have been able to deliver more advanced combatants (with associated subsystems), any need for shipyards to upgrade their own production facilities, as well as whether the Navy had itself mandated a certain fleet level to be reached at a certain period of time before moving onto a more advanced type of combatant later.
I also have not seen an abundance of proof that the Navy is in lack of trained personnel going into the future either; they have a sufficient fleet of modern small, medium and larger combatants such that they can be switched over from smaller and/or older ships to newer more modern combatants. The time taken between launch and commissioning for 052Ds and 055s we've seen is about what would be expected when extrapolated from the time taken for launch/commissioning for the 054A and 056/A classes (when considering their size and complexity).
I think it's worth adding as well, that most navies do not constantly have ongoing surface combatant production; if anything it is normal for shipbuilding pauses of years or even decades between successive generations of ships in the same role.
China of course, is not most navies, and into the immediate future may only experience a surface combatant production pause of a few years before moving onto a new generation. This is partly because of the pace of advancement of domestic technology, and partly because the Chinese Navy overall will likely still expand going into the future and has yet to reach whatever "critical mass/aim" the top brass have.
BUT, that doesn't mean we may still not see a slight pause in production. Remember after all, that the Chinese Navy didn't launch any new destroyers between the second 051C (early 2007) and the third 052C (October 2010) for a period of about three and a half years, so it's not like pauses in production are new.
