This is not my exact area of expertise, but I do know that western academic practices were brought back to China in the late Qing, and the Chinese began to modernize their own scholastic institutions. In the late 19th century, there were efforts to introduce ideas from abroad and bring them back into China, and to incorporate these foreign teachings into all levels of society. My great-great grandfather for instance, was sent to the University of Paris to study European law, and then tasked with coming back to China and helping the Qing modernize their legal code, or the DaQing LvLi. These same practices also applied to modern scholarship, with the first modern academic universities replacing the centuries old, even millennia old Guozijian or Imperial Universities.

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China did have, and continues to maintain an over-two millennia old tradition of native historiography, but this sort of academic work was very 'elite', in the sense that it was largely inaccessible to those members of Chinese society who were not a part of the highly literate, scholar-gentry class. The most obvious example of this is probably the tradition of maintaining an Official History of a dynasty's predecessor and these tomes have been collectively referred to as the Ershisi Shi, or the Twenty-four Histories. Often these drafters would have been members of the highly elite scholar-bureaucrat circles chosen by the emperor himself, or certainly during the late empire anyways. These works were also censored by the reigning government, often to please the emperor and fit a specific narrative (think Dynastic cycle). But in compiling these works, techniques that we still as modern, Western historians use were incorporated. Archival and field work was done, and the works all have a very logical and chronological flow to them. I'm going to just lump Chinese historiography into late Imperial bureaucracy and education, since by the nature of Chinese court practices, they historians of the Chinese court were also the ministers and officials who had the same education.

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The educational practices in mid-late Imperial China of course, focused on the civil service examinations. While it was probably the first modern, meritorious civil service system, it had a particularly abstract curriculum focused solely on neo-Confucianism by the Ming, and was extremely narrow and restrictive in its scope. When Western education practices came around as a result of 1. Chinese scholars going abroad and 2. European and American missionaries coming to China, the civil service system and the associated Imperial Universities very quickly were phased out. Even though the system had stood since the Tang dynasty nearly 1300 years prior, by 1905 the civil service exam system was completely obsolete. In its place, modern universities established on Western principles were founded. BeiDa was among the first, and it followed very closely the American model of university teaching, with the 4-year Bachelor's degrees. Soon afterwards, many more followed including perennial rival Tsinghua.

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So in short, Western contact basically led to a complete revolution in Chinese academia, including in official historiography. It felled the ancient civil service system, replaced it with modern institutions of thought, and paved the way for modern Chinese post-secondary education. The Chinese technique of maintaining a classical official history is still observed, as to my knowledge the current Qing history is in the works. I can't immediately recall more, perhaps, leisurely histories? China was a civilization of elite letters, but very few if any commoners left a mark on the corpus of Imperial Chinese written works. There do exist some pieces of vernacular fiction, such as Tao Hua Shan and Hong Lou Meng which are semi-historical and do provide historians with a perspective into certain elements of Chinese history.