The United States has 6 major shipyards and 20 second tier smaller yards. China had at least 270 active large shipyards as of 2010 capable of building large ships, although like I mentioned several of those shipyards are struggling to find new orders and some have gone inactive. As best I can tell, the Chinese have been building their naval and government operated maritime vessels with only around 10% of their large shipyards, and for the last decade the shipbuilding sector in China has been growing primarily due to commercial orders for new ships, not government orders for government ships.
What does the PLA Navy look like if the Chinese decide to retain their shipbuilding sector through this downward economic period by keeping only 30 (~15%) of their major shipyards open via governemnt orders? I don't know what that would look like, but I will note that 30 major shipyards building navy ships is the same shipbuilding capacity the United States leveraged to build all their warships in World War II. While no one would expect China to field ships at the same pace the US did in WWII, even if China adds orders of a single large PLAN vessel or multiple smaller vessels for 30 shipyards over 5 years while sustaining current construction pace for PLA Navy and government maritime agencies, the size of the PLAN and associated government maritime agencies could potentially triple by 2020.
Now tell me what it looks like if the Chinese government sustains 30%, or even 50% of their shipbuilding sector with government orders for PLA Navy and government maritime agency vessel orders. In theory, the Chinese government could decide to build their own 1000 ship Navy over the next 5 years by simply buying 2 ships at only 100 of their large shipyards for the sole political and economic purpose of saving the 50% of shipbuilders who are expected to go out of business over the next 2-3 years, with the very real alternative being that all those manufacturing workers become unemployed.
And given the kind of vessels China is starting to build, not to mention their renewed focus on airlift capacity, that brand new 1000 ship Navy may not be designed to be a regional defensive force, rather the largest global force in the world. This may sound far fetched, but the story of China's brand of communism is that the government steps in when the Chinese brand of capitalism starts to slack, and if you apply that model to a purpose of sustaining the shipbuilding sector during an economic down turn of a few years it would be an entirely rational political and economic move by the Chinese government to build Navy ships in low quantities at multiple shipyards, and while 100 shipyards sounds like a lot, that is actually only between 35-40% of their total shipbuilding capacity. Even if all 200 ships average 5000 DWTs, that would only be 1 million DWTs worth of ships, which would only make up about 10% of total DWTs the shipbuilding sector was down in 2012 from 2011. Still think it is far fetched? The Chinese could build 200 ships a year that averaged 5000 DWTs spread out across 100 shipyards and the Chinese shipbuilding sector is so large from it's 2010 high that the sector would still contract and consolidate.
