I think China should field two types of tanks in two opposite extremes. One super low like type 96 and one super high like the new 99. China is surrounded by weak small countries like Vietnam and Kazakhstan, those do not have the gut to contest China's military might. On the other hand, there is Russia and the Korean Peninsula (Uncle Sam), those are the two fearsome enemies in the world, both with state of the art tanks, which China need a decent inventory of equally extreme tanks to combat. But built in large quantities during peace time would be wasteful and unnecessary. So China should just build large amount of 96's, in order to train soldiers and conduct small patrols to tame those small neighbors, and pull out the big guns, like type 99A2 in case of possible conflicts with Americans in the Korean peninsula, and possibly the Russians.