It’s also important to consider the perceived needs of the different navies. The US wants global power projection, which requires ships capable of extended deployments overseas. This pushes towards larger capital ships with hefty logistical support, so an overseas mission can be sustained for a long duration.

China is more interested in regional power projection. This pushes them more towards a Jeune Ecole style fleet of larger numbers of smaller ships. This allows them a much greater degree of flexibility and concentration for deployments in their region, at the cost of greater difficulty in long distance sustainment of operations.

Because the two powers have different goals, their fleet compositions will differ. The US prefers fewer, larger ships that are very costly to maintain, while China prefers more, smaller ships that are individually less expensive. We can see this if we compare quantity of ships in each fleet vs the total tonnage of each fleet. This may all change at some point in the future, but it’s where we sit now.