I was a submarine officer and worked at Electric Boat for 5 years. I think you are right, they have a long way to be able to use a submarine correctly. Even if we give them the next copy of the VIRGINIA. However, they still have deadly submarines that can cause a lot of problems.
I agree but with a minor “but”.
I have in my hand a Casio MS 805 calculator. I can rock and roll with it. Years ago though a friend gave me another device that some Engineers somewhere thought it would be funny to call a “calculator” when it truth it would perform ANY math calculation any PHD Math guy could dream up. Thusly, I could not use 10% of it.
Submarines, as you know better than I, are killing machines. The Chinese do not have the experience to conduct bluewater combat using arguably the most complex machine on earth thus it is likely they are following in our path and spending billions on device A when they should be spending those billions on device B.