Is it possible that the PRC is getting ready to fight an enemy that will not exist when their preparations are complete?
By that, I mean the USN may have evolved substantially by the time the PLAN is ready to fight the current USN. It may be a situation sort of like preparing to fight a war with battleships just as the carrier and the submarine become the dominant forces at sea. I am not certain what the "future war" concepts of the USN embrace, so it would be interesting to see a post on it.
On the other hand SSN-19 "Sunburns" hurt no matter how advanced your surface forces get...
Well, we are looking at Litoral Combat ships, Sea-basing and a number of other interesting avenues in the near to mid-term.
I believe the PLAN is taking as much of that into account as possible.
As I stated earlier, short of bankrupting us, they will not be able to keep pace with us tit for tat in conventional or future ships and missiles IMHO, and they will have to find some asymetrical way of leveling the filed, particularly as regards our carriers.
The carriers trump them right now, but you can bet they are working on it.