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Deng Xia Peng laid the foundation for current PLA doctrine by stating that wars between the Great Powers would be a thing of the past. The new battleground would be fought between proxies and at times between a Great Power and a proxy. China, at the time, lacked proxies who can be used against the Soviet Red Army while the former USSR surrounded China with Indian, Mongolian, and Vietnamese defence pacts.

Even combined, these three countries could not mount a serious threat to Chinese territorial integrity but they did pose a serious drain on Chinese military resources under wartime conditions. Therefore, the PLA must develop the ability to eliminate these countries' ability to wage offensive war before the Red Army could take advantage. However, significant military energies remained to thwart Soviet armoured threats. Those units stationed north got the best training and technology while Category B and reserve forces remained to deal with the southern fronts.

Since the end of the Cold War, the PLA views no one is being capable of mounting a serious invasion of the Chinese homeland. However, local wars would continue to occur. The PLA saw the need to at least have the capability of controlling any threat to her borders. The War Zone Campaign is an attempt to develop the forces and the tactics necessary to secure China's borders, not through wars of attrition but to destroy an enemy's ability to wage immediate war in a very limited zone of operations. The War Zone Campaign deals significantly into luring, trapping, and destroying major hostile formations in a very limited but decisive action. A major component of this doctrine, however, is the ability to move forces heavier and faster than opposing forces. It is also a major problem.

The War Zone Campaign differs significantly from the People's War Concept. In the People's War, the PLA can rely on large static formations deep within Chinese territory to outbleed Soviet tank columns. Significant logistic and transportation questions were bypassed since the Chinese would be fighting at home. The War Zone Campaign is to take the fight to the enemy and that essentially means transporting viable formations and supplies to the fight.

The problem was how to adapt those large People's War formations into the more mobile War Zone Campaign. The obvious answer is that the PLA could not. The PLA lacks the necessary logistic and organizational capabilities. While the PLA has demonstrated it can move large formations in the hundreds of thousands of men, it cannot move fast enough to catch an enemy off guard. The 79 Sino-Vietnam War saw a well-entrenched and ready Vietnamese border defence. The answer was the formation of the Fist Units, much smaller formations that are easier to transport but requiring significantly more training and better equipment.

Still, the War Zone Campaign inherited a lot from the PLA's traditional capabilities. Namely, a large tenacious but inflexible army. The rank and file could be expected to follow their orders to the death but initiative was not encouraged. There was no need to train fast thinking soldiers in Stalingrad type defences. Instead, tenacious troops who would outgrit and outbleed the enemy were required. This legacy did not allow the PLA to adopt a Western style of maneuver warfare by smaller, well trained, relatively higher innovative troops. Instead, the PLA fell back to a proven model of using cheaper trained but well motivated troops to accomplish this War Zone Campaign.