Huang Yanpei sculpture
According to Huang Yanpei's historical periodicity, historical development can be divided into four stages: entrepreneurship, development, prosperity and decline. These four stages go round and round, forming a historical cycle. In each cycle, a new start-up period will begin with social chaos and turbulence, then enter the development stage, the country will gradually prosper and reach its peak, and finally begin to decline for various reasons and enter the start-up stage of the next historical cycle.
Huang Yanpei believes that the period of historical cycle is related to the development of human society and the characteristics of human nature. The progress and decline of human society are all caused by the changes of people's desires, motives and behaviors, and these human characteristics are relatively stable, so a historical cycle has emerged.
Huang Yanpei's law of historical periodicity puts forward a viewpoint of historical development, emphasizing the repetitiveness and regularity of history, which has certain enlightenment for understanding the evolution and change of history. However, the development of history is influenced by many complicated factors, and there are differences in the historical development of different countries and regions, so the historical periodic law cannot explain all historical phenomena and events. It is just a thinking angle and theoretical framework in historical research.