Abstract: A Critical History of Ancient Chinese Historiography focuses its studies on the historians' reflections, their historical research activities, and their research achievements in ancient Chinese historiography. Covering a long period from Spring and Autumn period (approximately 771-476 BC) to Mid-Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), the critical history of ancient Chinese historiography can be divided into seven phases which experienced its initiation, development and prosperity respectively. During this long period of over 2500 years, China produced many outstanding historians, who made remarkable contributions to the development of Chinese historiography through writing critical history works and creating important concepts and terms that formed a discourse for Chinese historiography. A Critical History of Ancient Chinese Historiography offers a systematic and critical analysis to the important issues in ancient Chinese historiography, and insightful interpretations to the correlations between historiography and society, and the relationships between the historiography development and historical theories, and many other historical aspects. This research therefore provides a constructive role in developing a critical discourse for ancient Chinese historiography in terms of solid documentary and theoretic foundations.

Key words: Critical history of ancient Chinese historiography, ancient Chinese historiography, historical theories