Trumpeter's recent 1/200 Sovremenny destroyer is well-known, but I didn't realise until recently that
they also made a range of 1/200 and 1/150 Chinese warships. Most of these are modern/post-war types, but
there is also a WW2 river gunboat (can't remember the name).
I recently bought a couple on eBay (haven't seen them in shops in the UK, other than Hannants online store) - the Luda-class destroyer (labelled as a "Dalian" on the box, but this is in fact the name of the shipyard which built it), which is derived from the 1950s Soviet Kotlin-class, and is similar to a WW2 destroyer in appearance; and the Houjian-class missile corvette, (described simply as "PLA Missile Boat" on the box) which is a much more modern design. It's vaguely reminiscent of the Soviet Grisha-class but I suspect it's a completely Chinese-designed ship.
The destroyer cost around £15 and the missile boat around £8, both including P&P.
The destroyer seems quite good detail-wise though it could benefit from some extra scratchbuilt parts. The missile boat
is rather more basic, particularly with regards to the surface detail on the superstructure, but all of the main details seem to be present. Finding reference material for these ships will be rather hard, though.
Both kits have cleanly-moulded parts with little flash, and the finer parts (such as gun barrels) are moulded well. The overall detail level is reminiscent of 1970s/early 80s Revell and Airfix. Not as good as the Sovremenny, certainly, but they are much cheaper.
Another interesting thing is that all of the ships are designed to be motorised - they have metal prop shafts with rubber seals, and space for a motor and battery compartment (not included). Not sure if they can be converted to R/C, or how this feature affects the accuracy of the hulls, though they look reasonable to me.
Has anyone here built one of these kits? I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts, and in particular I'd be interested to see any pics of completed models or links to sites with information on the real ships.
EDIT: Just found this via searching on Google; this is a very good article
on building one of the ships in this range (the Harbin-class destroyer)
http://modelingmadness.com/reviews/misc/ships/spahrharbin.htm