The left-lateral strike-slip movement of the Zhongwei fault zone since late Pleistocene has caused the differentiation of preexisting overthrust faults in the zone. Some early-formed faults or fault segments continued to be active, while the others have become inactive. In addition, some new faults were developed since then. The faults in the Zhongwei fault zone, therefore, can be classified into three categories: the newly-generated, the inherited and the rejected faults.The newly-generated fault refers to the fault that is developed newly during a certain tectonic movement. With regard to the Zhongwei fault zone, it refers to the one which has developed since late Pleistocene. Such a fault is the result of the left-lateral strike-slip movement of the Zhongwei fault zone, and did not exist during the early compressive overthrusting movement. The investigation on these newly generated faults may provide the following information: (1) the feature of tectonic stress field since late Pleistocene; (2) the starting time of the late tectonic movement, and (3) the displacement amount and slip rate of the fault. The inherited fault refers to the fault or fault segment that has existed before the late left-lateral strike-slip movement of the fault zone and has been still active after the movement. The prominent advantage of the inherited fault is that the fault contains a lot of tectonic information: (1) the inherited faults recorded the information of multiple tectonic movements; (2) they are the witness to the multiple tectonic movements along the Zhongwei fault zone; and (3) they are the important basis for the study of the tectonic evolution history. The rejected fault refers to the fault or fault segment that was the part of the main fault zone and behaved in the same way as the main fault zone during the early tectonic movement. After the early tectonic movement, the fault or fault segment has become inactive during the subsequent tectonic movement, indicating that it was rejected. The fault may reserve most or all of the information about the early tectonic movement, which is basically not disturbed or destroyed by the late tectonic movement. The investigation of rejected faults, therefore, may provide the following essential information about the early tectonic movement: (1) the ceasing time of the early tectonic movement; (2) the feature of the early tectonic stress field; and (3) the mode of faulting, i.e. stick-slip or creep-slip.