Shitong

thumb|page=252|A page from a Ming dynasty printed edition of Shitong thumb|page=518|Pages from a copy of Shitong located in the Shanghai Library The Shitong (; lit. "Generality of Historiography" or "All about Historiography"), also translated into English as A Thorough Exploration in Historiography, is one of the first Chinese-language works specifically about the theories of history and a detailed examination of historiography. It is deemed to be "the first comprehensive work on historical criticism in any language." The text was compiled by Liu Zhiji between 708 and 710 during the Tang dynasty. The book discusses the general pattern of the past official dynastic historiography on structure, method, order of arrangement, sequence, caption and commentary back to the pre-Qin era.

Shitong is divided into 39 inner chapters and 13 outer chapters. Three of the inner chapters had been lost since the times of Ouyang Xiu, while the rest managed to survive. The inner chapters, the principal part of the book, provided information on the types, forms, rules, layout, the collecting of historical materials, outline, and the principle of historiography. The outer chapters describe the official system of the historiographer, origin and development of histories, and the success and failure of past historians.