Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but I don’t think China is ahead of German parts and machine quality or European electronics quality just yet, especially on a large-scale industry level. I don’t mean defense tech, I meant technology in general, and industry standards back that up. Most companies would buy German machinery over Chinese, even basic electronic components coming out of China have such a large spectrum of quality that it’s just easier to go with the European option nine times out of ten.
I mean absolutely no offense to you or the other people on this forum but Chinese defense technology is massively overrated at times (just as it is massively underrated equally, there’s really no balance). Most recently their work with GaN Modules for radars (because there is none). The belief that China is somehow leading the world in GaN radar tech as is often brought up on this forum makes me and many others scratch our heads waiting for any sort of proof, study, research or model to back these claims up.
That’s not to say China isn’t a world leader in technology, it absolutely is, and it’s the biggest producer at the same time (and the biggest market), it’s just not realistic to assume that China can reach the same quality in 20 years as other nations did in hundreds of years while also having better infrastructure, but that’s a very long and convoluted argument for another time.
Coming to the topic at hand. I meant to say exactly what you did, PNs 054As are not the best of what China makes, my comparison is solely for the PN ships, if PLAN has better ones that doesn’t matter to me, I know they do. 054A is just a cheap second line ship for them, if they wanted they could massively upgrade it. They certainly have the money and tech, but they don’t need to do that. Even the latest PLAN 054A is still using HQ16, YJ83 and the same underpowered propulsion. It did however get upgraded illuminators that the PN 054As didn’t.
I would pick the Babur over a 054A, you already answered why many times, because while the 054A could be better if they gave it modern SAMs and ASHMs like you mentioned, they haven’t done so yet, not even in PLAN service, by that logic the Babur can be massively upgraded as well. So even if it’s carrying twice the amount of missiles, If they’re that old and can’t be guided/fired as efficiently or as quickly, then they certainly don’t make up for it by numbers. Not to mention the 054A is considerably underpowered in the engine department when compared to ships of the same size as well. Again, that’s not because it’s a bad ship, that’s because it’s what PLAN needs from it, but that doesn’t count for the PN, for the PN we need to look at it as a standalone ship.