Yes—like transferring crew from other ships. Addressing this requires more than just a few measures, an overall systematic approach. And part of issue is with the higher-ranking personnel such as ship captains, people who have 10 to 20 years of experience. At a certain point, they just need more time
One example they gave is the 4th Type 075. They suspect that a shortage of personnel is one reason it hasn’t been commissioned yet. They also noted that finding new crew isn’t straightforward, and that transferring experienced crew from other ships, which they think will happen, results in a decrease in combined performance. I.e. if you replace half of a ship’s existing crew with new personnel, the ship doesn’t become 50% as effective, it becomes even less
They specified submarines and the aforementioned 075. Other comments suggest the effect is uneven across platforms, but nothing particularly specific was highlighted
They did mention the USN during WWII, but they noted the difference. While it's true that perhaps the USN had combatants operating at "50% effectiveness", the opponents they faced weren't much better. This is not the case for the PLAN as we are facing the most powerful navy in the world from the get-go.
They pointed out how this was basically impossible to foresee for the higher ranking personnel. Imagine it’s the year 2000: your country is poor, your best ships are those old Russian ones, and you go to your superior and say "we need to retain all these people because in 15 years we’ll undergo one of the largest naval build-ups in human history"
I just want to be clear in case my wording is giving a wrong impression. It's not like this is a massive debuff and the PLAN is 30% less effective or something. But rather, it's something to take very seriously and be kept in mind.
I've always felt that more attention should be given to the human side of the PLA. It's partially rather difficult to observe, and partially quite boring as watching the "people things" isn't as fun as analyzing shiny new hardware. But at the end of the day, a military is still made up of people
