China has surpassed Japan in the construction and purchasing of new surface combat vessels, according to an April 25 article on Kanwa Defense Review.

China's surface combat vessels may not be as good as their Japanese counterparts in terms of quality, the article said, but the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has a greater number of destroyers and frigates equipped with active electronically scanned array radar. The PLA Navy currently has six Type 052C guided-missile destroyers, each carrying up to 49 HQ9 air defense missiles. In addition, the vessel can fire YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missiles, which have a range of 280 kilometers.

The country has also completed the construction of two Type 052D destroyers based on the Type 052C, and the new vessel can carry 64 HQ9 air defense missiles. Four more Type 052Ds are under construction at the Dalian and Jiangnan shipyards.

The PLA Navy will likely operate between 10-12 Type 052C and Type 052D destroyers by 2015, but China will still lag behind the United States and Japan in building quality vessels, according to Kanwa.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) currently has four Kongo-class and two Atago-class destroyers. Equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System and RIM-161 Standard Missile 3, all six destroyers are twice as powerful as their Chinese counterparts in intercepting enemy aircraft and missiles. The JMSDF destroyers are also better than the PLA Navy destroyers in anti-submarine, electronic and cyber warfare, the article said.

Despite a disparity in quality, China has numerical superiority over Japan. The PLA Navy has 18 Type 054A frigates, while the JMSDF only has nine Murasame-class and five Takanami-class frigates.
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