Abstract: Since the modern period of Chinese history, some scholars have discarded the traditional Chinese philosophical viewpoint that holds history repeats itself. They have generalized social and political cycles in Chinese history from China’s political upheavals. However, their studies, due to the lack either solid evidence, sound definitions of cycles, or the analyses of the causes of the cycles, have failed to grow into well-founded theories. In 1999, Guoguang Wu introduced, for the first time, the cycle theory into studies on contemporary Chinese politics and started rigorous academic observation. In 2004 Yuan Wang followed suit and introduced his own and other scholars’ studies and theories on China’s political cycles to mainland China, putting this issue under public debate. Scholars like Weihai Wang and Yue Xie came up with their own researches.

So far, scholars are divided on issues regarding the descriptions of the repeated “identical status” in political cycles, intervals between cycles, the time frame within which cycles occur, the causes of cycles, and predictions of future cycles. But they have to overcome many obstacles in the study on China’s political cycles, including the deficiencies caused ignoring certain details during conceptualizing abstract ideas. Also, more empirical researches are needed. In order to advance the field, investigations should be done through not only thorough review of the whole history but also comparisons between countries and regions.