I never heard about SSN and SSBN being scrapped though. I probably missed it or it was before my time starting following China military development. I only remember it was about carrier vs subs debate at the time. To be fair, the "naive faction" was probably just continuing what Deng Xiaoping warned them to do, which is to hide your capabilities and bide your time. And China just came out of Tiananmen. I dislike Jiang, but one of his great legacies was to restore the relationship with the west aftern tiananmen, and business as usual can continue. Without that restoration, I doubt China can develop like today. Building carrier at that time, when the relationship was extremely fragile, might provoke the west into containing China early.