I was under the impression that the entire reason we give these guys' statements more weight is that they have specific insider knowledge, not that they can somehow predict something better than we can. Either you know it's going to be 68-70,000 tons, or you don't know and you're just guessing. Either you know it's going to be steam cat over EM cat, or you don't know and you're just guessing. In which case why do their guesses get more authority? I don't get it.
In some cases they have explicit insider knowledge for specifics (like class names, in case of 055 designation, or for propulsion type such as 002 being conventional) or things which will occur (such as when construction will start, in the case of predicting 001A construction time).
And in other cases they have to make certain educated guesses based on their own limited insider knowledge, e.g.: such as the specific catapult type that 002 will use.
As for why we consider them to have more authority than just any random person on the internet, it's often because they've built up a reputation and history for making predictions and educated guesses which turn out to be true.
edit: one reason PLA watching is so hard is that literally every single rumour or sentence from big shrimps have to be broken down and put into a category of "likelihood" and to put it in context of pre-existing definitive knowledge or principles... there often are no simple "yes, this ship/aircraft/whatever is definitely happening and this is the definitive general specifications of it" early on in the rumour cycle; often we only know that information far far later before the first photos of the product is released online, and sometimes we don't even get certain specifications at that point!
edit 2: in this specific case regarding 002's displacement, pop3 has a record of listing ships' displacement as standard displacement, so if he's saying it will displace 68k-70k tons then he's saying that is what he expects the standard displacement to be.
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