In the traditional historiography of China and the West, there are completely different differences in quantity, form, tendency and many other aspects.
In terms of quantity, China's traditional historiography is very vast, whether it is official history books or private history writing, there are a large number of classics left for future generations to study. The main representative works are Confucius's "Spring and Autumn", Sima Qian's "History", Ban Gu's "Book of Han", Sima Guang's "Zizhi Tongjian" and so on.
On the contrary, the traditional history books in the West are relatively few, lackluster, and all of them are private histories, basically no official history books, the main representative works are "Homer's Epic", "Iriad", "Around the Earth", "History", "Peloponnesian War History" and so on.
In terms of tendencies, the politicization and moralization of China's traditional historical works, China's history books first originated from the government's administrative records, and the people who record history, known as "history", that is, government officials, in the earliest times, there were left history responsible for recording words, right history responsible for recording deeds, in order to divide labor to record the words and deeds of kings and subjects.
At that time, official revision of history books was relatively prosperous, and private history writing was in a relatively marginal stage, and in the period from ancient times to the Spring and Autumn Period, history books and historical knowledge were monopolized by the authorities and became a kind of study of kings and officials.
Because of this, the recorded history will inevitably be influenced by politics, imperial politics is the main framework of traditional Chinese history books, and social life is often ignored and lacks certain philosophical thinking.
In traditional Chinese thought, historiography carries a kind of indoctrination requirement, which is to reflect certain gains and losses, merits, and even moral evaluations. The legends of loyalty, martyrdom, and officials in the main history all reflect that historians are inclined to choose.
In this regard, Western traditional historiography has a strong heroic view of history, believing that outstanding historical figures are the wind, the people are the sea, and the so-called history is the wind that makes the sea rise huge waves.
In addition, their history books were subject to a tendency of gods, and the content they recorded was not mainly based on human activities, but on the deeds of gods. It is believed that what happens to human beings is the embodiment of the will of the gods.
Then in the later medieval period, Western historiography was deeply shrouded in the shadow of theology and religion, and the content of the history books was mainly to highlight the Christian spirit and explain the relationship between man and God.
In summary, there are completely different differences between China and the West in terms of traditional historiography, but in general, China's traditional historiography is superior to the West, more systematic and formalized, and the credibility is relatively high. Western historical research did not become what an independent discipline should have until after modern times.