Why fleet growth must include maintenance yards

Are maintenance costs and infrastructure too often neglected when navies expand, as reports suggested about the Chinese fleet?

Yes; new shipyards do not automatically create the dry docks, waterfront space, and maintenance capacity needed to sustain the added hulls.

A construction program is not complete when a ship leaves the building yard. Maintenance yards and dry docks require scarce waterfront space, specialized infrastructure, and long-term funding. Rapidly expanding construction capacity without expanding repair capacity leaves more ships competing for the same facilities. The watch point turns life-cycle support into a central cruiser-design and force-structure constraint rather than an afterthought.