Okay, so, this might be helpful for the discussion, maybe:
The authors also used Ssu-Ma Ch'ien's theory to assess the dynasties that came after his lifetime, although I personally find it somewhat suspect.Chang Xie w/ Sohail Inayatullah pp.14-16 said:...For Confucius, the first stage was disorderly, an anarchic stage of continuous warfare. The next stage was small tranquillity, characterized by institutions of family/private property, egoism, and social instability. The third stage was that of great tranquillity marked by mutual concern, social harmony, and respect for learning and virtue.
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To the Chinese, history is of critical importance in civilization's social development. The rulers usually regarded the history of the former dynasty as a "mirror" which could be seen as a guide for future political conduct. History was to be learned from...
For Confucius, social change is a problem of the moral qualification of a man or a family to rule. A ruler may be extremely powerful, but if he is selfish and cruel and oppresses his people, "heaven" will cease to aid and protect him or sanction his rile and he will fail, like the last king of Shang. And yet a state may be weak or insignificant, but if it is wise or benevolent in its administration and care for its people, then all men will flock to its rule and heaven will aid it to rise to the highest position, just as with the leaders of the Zhou.
Borrowing from the Yin-Yang school, Ssu-Ma Ch'ien rearticulated these ideas into a rise-and-fall theory of virtue - arguing that the exact components that lead to the rise would lead to the fall and vice versa.
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There are thus two dimensions to Ssu-Ma Ch'ien's theory. The first is the pattern of rise and fall, growth and decay, waxing and waning. This is directly related to the moral order creating a rise and fall of virtue patterns. Second, each dynasty could be understood by its moral characteristics: good faith for the Xia, piety for the Shang, and refinement for the Zhou. As each dynasty decline, its virtue was transformed into a fault. Good faith became rusticity, piety became its opposite of superstition, and refinement turned into hollow show. The Qin dynasty failed because it did not transform the hollow show of the declining Zhou. However, "the Han wisely returned to the good faith of the Xia."
Equally central to Ssu-Ma Ch'ien was the view that each dynasty begins with a sage king of superlative wisdom and virtue (Yu of the Xia and Ch'eng T'ang of the Qin) and each dynasty closes with an unspeakably evil and degenerate monach (Chieh of the Xia and Ch'eng T'ang of the Qin). Between the good and evil are merely a list of names of rulers.
However, while history was certainly cyclical, it was not preordained. Burton Watson writes, "History to him was a constant process of growth, and it was impossible to think of returning to the same static golden age of the past. What was possible, however, was the creation of a new golden age in the present by a wise appreciation of the moral values appropriate to the times." History then is not just the repeat of the old story.
The cycle of history is renewed when a new sage overthrows the previous tyrant and a new house or dynasty is established. Of course, the pattern does not always fit so exactly. According to Watson, it is "varied in the middle, as in the case of the Qin dynasty, by the appearance of worthy rulers who restore for a time the original virtue of the dynasty in an act of revival or restoration."
Thus, according to Ssu-Ma Ch'ien, history is a process of the endless and the eternal recurrence of social-cultural life. However, the repeat will never be the same as far as tune and space have changed. The regulation of the change is obvious when you observe the main stream of dynasties which follow the route of rise-fall-disappear. For Ssu-Ma Ch'ien, small changes took place in thirty years, medium changes in one hundred years, and great changes in three hundred years.
They go further and try to analyse modern, 20th & 21st Century China through the model but they seem kinda obsessed with portraying the PRC regime as being one of the illegitimate, virtue-less dynasties that won't last long so I haven't really bothered to include that section here.Chang Xie w/ Sohail Inayatullah p.17 said:Starting from the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties come the Qin, Han, Suit and Tang. The period between these six dynasties should be considered a transition from the refinement of Han to the good faith of the Sui. It is also the repetition of the warring period between Zhou and Win. Suit and Tang exactly reflected the dynasties of Qin and Han. Like the early dynasty of Zhou, the Han and Tang were also regarded as the periods of culture flourishing and high-level prosperity. During these periods, China's population jumped to its peak, especially in the Tang dynasty. Just as the cycle ended with the Zhou, Han, Tang, and Ming, respectively, the cycle began with the Xia, Qin, Sui, and Yuan dynasties, respectively. They were similar in that they reunified after a period of warring and separated states. This led to highly centralized and standardized thoughts and beliefs, which prepared for cultural growth of the next dynasty.