You're not alone! Everyone knows push hands has moving step push hands. In fact if you read the OP, I bring it up and talk about it. I also explain how to incorporate it into the ratings system, as well as other kinds of push hands. Why do you feel alone?
You're right, but that has nothing to do with the ratings system.
Confucian thought did not oppose competition. It had a precise model for contest governed by virtue, and that model was archery. Analects 3.7 says: 「君子無所爭，必也射乎！揖讓而升，下而飲，其爭也君子。」 The gentleman does not contend, except perhaps in archery. Even then he bows and yields as he ascends, and drinks with his rival after descending; his contest is that of a gentleman. The contest is real, because the target is hit or missed. But the conduct surrounding it is ritualised, so that winning does not license any means.
Analects 3.16 goes further: 「射不主皮，為力不同科，古之道也。」 In archery, piercing the hide is not the main thing, because men’s strength differs; this was the ancient way. Read in its usual sense, this is a scoring principle. Ritual archery deliberately did not reward raw penetrating power. It rewarded accuracy and form, because rewarding power would have measured the wrong thing.
This is the most exact classical parallel to the problem of competitive push hands. A rule set that awards the match to whoever ends up outside the circle is 主皮: it scores penetration. Taiji’s own classics make the opposite claim, that 四兩撥千斤 four ounces deflect a thousand pounds is the point and that winning by superior strength is 非關學力而有為也 “not something acquired by learning”.
A contest that rewards what the art says it does not teach is not testing the art. So let us not promote anything-goes in push hands. The ratings system is an attempt to come up with a different, if not better solution. A better solution would be interesting!
