The National History was the final stage in the compilation of the historical record of the reigning dynasty. It involved nothing less than the writing of a full-scale Standard History, in the annal-biography form appropriate for a dynastic history, covering the current dynasty down to a given date. Like the Veritable Records, it was a T'ang innovation. But whereas the Veritable Records came to be composed as a matter of course once a reign was over, whatever the delay in their commissioning and completion might be, there was no established convention governing when it would be appropriate to revise and update the National History.

The National History also differed from the Veritable Records in that, because it always began with the dynastic founding and therefore included the period that had been covered in its predecessors, its growth tended to be incremental, a process that continued until in 941–4 the last National History, which had been compiled in 759–60, was finally incorporated into the Chiu T'ang shu. The writing of a new National History, although it might edit or correct the account of earlier events in its forerunner, and perhaps introduce subtle changes to make the account of past events more acceptable in its own time, was essentially the continuation and updating of the record, using the Veritable Records as the main source of information on the period to be covered for the first time.