Let me give you another example.
The Type-37 subchasers are being replaced by the Type-56 corvette which have a displacement over 300% greater.
Yet the crew is only increasing by 11% from 70 to 78. Cost will go up, but it does not scale proportionally.
Well that's hardly a fair comparison, since you are taking a 1960s design and comparing it with one from half a century later.
Unless you want to argue that the 055 represents a bigger revolutionary leap than the Zumwalt class, that's not a really good example.
Another example is that the Type-55 is going with 4 gas turbines instead of the Type-52D arrangement of 2 gas turbines and 2 diesels. This removes one set of engineering skills and maintenance spares, so we should actually see a smaller engineering crew and lower maintenance costs for the Type-55.
Well, lets reserve judgement on specific scenarios until they actually build the thing, since conclusions based on rumours are only as valid as the rumour, which if turns out to be false, renders all conclusions derived from them moot.
These sorts of examples happen all the time when you scale up a ship.
You get greater efficiencies, but the overwhelming general trend is that as you scale a ship up, so does its complement and operating cost.
You also misunderstand what I meant by fuel efficiency. You correct state that:
"Bigger hulls have better water resistant factors, meaning less water resistance per ton of displacement because water resistance does not increase in proportion to displacement."
But when you look at fuel efficiency per ton of displacement, larger hulls are more efficient because water resistance area increases slower than the volume/displacement. And note that a larger hull carries more weapons per ton of displacement and can also hold much more fuel.
So in summary, a larger hull is more efficient when you look at value for money eg. fuel consumed versus the larger number of weapons and the capability of the sensors carried.
I think you might have misunderstood. Fuel efficiency was never in question of the issue, the issue is overall absolute consumption, which again, has the overwhelming trend of increasing along with displacement.
Of course there is a limit where you reach diminishing returns, but there's also no doubt that the Type-52 hull has reached the limits of its displacement and that it has insufficient VLS cells for a balanced multi-mission loadout.
And how have you reached this conclusion that it has insufficient VLS cells?
Remember that if the Chinese navy decides to undertake long-term production of the Type-52D and Type-55 simultaneously, then they don't have the numbers to reach economies of scale AND they will face lazy monopolistic suppliers because there aren't enough ship orders to promote competition.
Don't you see that building more 052Ds will result in greater economies of scale for the type?
As for monopoly and competition, well you may wish to read up on that as you don't seem to fully understand how that works. Competition has no strict connection with how many units are on order, but rather with how many suppliers are fighting for those orders. You can and do have competition between multiple parties over a single thing or order. The only time a monopoly arrises is when there is a single supplier and no real alternatives.
With the 052D already being built at 2 separate yards, and the 055 likely to also follow that trend, there is little risk of suppliers abusing their position to squeeze profits. Especially in the current economic environment and given the very likely case that the PLAN is doing them a solid by buying more ships than it needs and spreading those orders between more yards than is strictly necessary to help the yards weather the downturn.
Any sort of abuse from the yards will see their naval contracts pulled and themselves blacklisted and most likely soon bankrupt, since government orders now account for a very big share of the order books of Chinese yards.
You should note that I've actually done a course module on ship design which looked at the economics, albeit this was many years ago. I don't have the time nor inclination to go into every point I make in excruciating detail, but there are a lot of books and articles that are freely available on this topic if you google.
Well good for you, but I am a trained economist who worked in project management at a major shipyard, so I also know a thing or two about the subject.
I don't like throwing experience and credentials around, so how about we just focus on the merits of the actual subject?
Note that the 20% figure is the absolute increase in Chinese military spending increases, not a 20% year on year growth figure. Also remember that the Navy is planning on the 10+ year timescale.
And that economic growth of 5-7% per year in China means the economy doubles in size in 10-14 years time. Presumably we can also expect to see military spending double as the baseline.
Well, umm, what?
If you are trying to say what I think you are, then you are have some serious misconceptions of how these things are measured and expressed.
Below is a quick table of how these things are calculated and expressed. The formatting is a little screwy but should still be legible.
Y, GDP@7%, GDP @5%, M Budget @7%, Abs@7%, % of GDP, M Budget @5%, Abs @5%, % of GDP
0 1.0000 1.0000 2.0000% 1.0000 0.0200 2.0000% 1.0000 0.0200
1 1.0700 1.0500 2.2000% 1.1000 0.0206 2.2000% 1.1000 0.0210
2 1.1449 1.1025 2.4200% 1.2100 0.0211 2.4200% 1.2100 0.0220
3 1.2250 1.1576 2.6620% 1.3310 0.0217 2.6620% 1.3310 0.0230
4 1.3108 1.2155 2.9282% 1.4641 0.0223 2.9282% 1.4641 0.0241
5 1.4026 1.2763 3.2210% 1.6105 0.0230 3.2210% 1.6105 0.0252
6 1.5007 1.3401 3.5431% 1.7716 0.0236 3.5431% 1.7716 0.0264
7 1.6058 1.4071 3.8974% 1.9487 0.0243 3.8974% 1.9487 0.0277
8 1.7182 1.4775 4.2872% 2.1436 0.0250 4.2872% 2.1436 0.0290
9 1.8385 1.5513 4.7159% 2.3579 0.0257 4.7159% 2.3579 0.0304
10 1.9672 1.6289 5.1875% 2.5937 0.0264 5.1875% 2.5937 0.0318
11 2.1049 1.7103 5.7062% 2.8531 0.0271 5.7062% 2.8531 0.0334
12 2.2522 1.7959 6.2769% 3.1384 0.0279 6.2769% 3.1384 0.0350
13 2.4098 1.8856 6.9045% 3.4523 0.0287 6.9045% 3.4523 0.0366
14 2.5785 1.9799 7.5950% 3.7975 0.0295 7.5950% 3.7975 0.0384
15 2.7590 2.0789 8.3545% 4.1772 0.0303 8.3545% 4.1772 0.0402
With 7% GDP growth, the economy doubles after 11 years, 15 years with 5%.
With 7% GDP growth, and the military budget growing at 10% year on year, at Y11, defence spending would be at 5.71% of GDP, and be 2.85 times as large as year 0 in absolute terms.
With 5% GDP growth and 10% year on year military growth, at Y15, defence spending would be at 8.35% of GDP and have increased to 4.18 times as that of the baseline year 0.
