I'm not saying they will never repair tanks. You guys are all jumping to conclusions and assuming much from what i've said. All i'm saying is PLA seems to prefer fielding huge numbers over arming elite tanks. 99s are still cheaper than western tanks and MUCH cheaper than K2s, T-14s and Type 10s. It's just an interesting observation that they will prefer to overwhelm the battlefield with huge numbers of tanks that can perform well enough to get the job done.
The bold sentence there seems to go against the entire philosophy of the PLA modernization. They have been saying for the past 30 years that they wanted to build a small, modern, elite force to fight a short, limited but high intensity war.
They have moved away from the number game long time ago. The "human wave", or in this case the tank wave, has long gone.
All evidence points to the PLA's intention to build a lean mean and elite force. If you look at virtually any weapon systems that they have, you will see that they choose elite and advanced systems over a large number of average systems. Even with training, they prefer focusing on small elite fast reaction forces.
When you want to deduce their doctrine, you want to look at the trend, not any single system. Keep in mind that the PLA is still evolving and still developing. They haven't fielded some systems yet possibly because they are still developing / testing such systems. Not because they don't want to field it.
Take for example their jet engines. Most of their fighters are still equipped with Russian engines. Do you want to conclude that they choose less advanced Russian engines on purpose because of some new weird doctrines that they just came up with? The fact of matter is that they simply don't have a good alternative yet. And they are working hard on it.
You cited 1000 type 99's and 1000 type 96's as your evidence of the PLA going for the numbers. A thousand tanks may sound like a lot to you, but China is a huge country. A thousand tanks may be the bare minimum for them. They still need to replace all their old tanks. How many type 59's do they still have? It may be in the thousands. So in other words, they may have decreased their total number of tanks dramatically if you look at the trend.