I study modern and contemporary China’s multiple revolutions, nation-building, inter-Asia connections from an intellectual and cultural perspective. I am interested in the issues of global modernity and decolonial processes, exploring ways in which historians could situate China — including imaginations of the country —  in them.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, I received an undergraduate degree at the University of Hong Kong before earning a doctorate at Columbia University in the City of New York. I also spent a stint as a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University.

• Revolutions and Nation-building in China
• Inter-Asia Relations
• Decolonization
• Ideas of China

Monograph and Edited Works

• China’s Conservative Revolution: The Quest for a New Order, 1927–1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018
• “Localizing Cold War Experiences in Hong Kong,” special column,Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 6 (2023)
• (co-edited with Tansen Sen) Beyond Pan-Asianism: Connecting China and India, 1840s–1960s. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2021

Articles

• “ ‘Renmin’ dui ‘minguo’ de tiaozhan” 「人民」對「民國」的挑戰 [The “people’s” challenge against the “Republic”], Bianxi “Zhonghua minguo” 辨析「中華民國」, Reflexion 《思想》, no. 51, 211–16
• “Interrogating Hong Kong’s Cold War settlement: a Christian perspective,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 6 (2023): 1055–74
• “Introduction: localizing Cold War experiences in Hong Kong,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 24, no. 6 (2023): 1007–13
• “Early encounters: introduction to the First Special Collection on the Nehru Papers,” China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (2022): 185–87
• “Reforming bodies and minds: anticommunism and transforming political enemies in Nationalist China,” positions: asia critique, vol. 28, no. 4 (2020): 789–814
• “Bridging ‘New China’ and postcolonial India: Indian narratives of the Chinese revolution,” Cultural Studies, vol. 34, no. 2 (2020): 295–316
• “The mutations of pan-Asianism: Zhang Junmai’s Cold War,” Twentieth-Century China, vol. 42, no. 2 (2017): 176–97
• “Decolonization and revolution: debating Gandhism in Republican China,” Modern China: An International Journal of History and Social Science, vol. 41, no. 1 (2015): 59–89
• “Clock time, national space, and the limits of Guomindang anti-imperialism,” positions: asia critique, vol.21, no.4 (2013): 921–45
• “The plea for Asia – Tan Yunshan, pan-Asianism and Sino-Indian relations,” China Report: A Journal of East Asian Studies, vol.46, no.4 (2010): 353–70

Book Chapters

• (with Joseph Gregory Yu) “The heart of ‘Berlin of the East’: Victoria Park, Queen’s College and Causeway Bay in Cold War Hong Kong,” in Tze-ki Hon and Ying-kit Chan eds., The Cityscapes of Taipei, Hong Kong, and Singapore during the Cold War, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025, 149–67.
• “Hewlett Johnson’s China: moral critique of capitalism,” in Ruiwen Chen ed., Glimpsing the Southern Hills: Festschrift in Honor of Professor Philip L. Wickeri. Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 2024, 84–100.
• “Resetting China’s conservative revolution: ‘people’s livelihood’ in 1950s Taiwan,” in Reto Hofmann and Max Ward eds., Transwar Asia: Ideology, Practices and Institutions. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 125–46.
• “When culture meets state diplomacy: the case of Cheena Bhavana,” in Sen and Tsui eds., Beyond Pan-Asianism, 236–65
• (co-authored with Tansen Sen) “Introduction,” in Sen and Tsui eds., Beyond Pan-Asianism, 1–25
• “Coming to terms with the People’s Republic of China: Jawaharlal Nehru in the early 1950s,” in Young-chan Kim ed., China-India Relations: Geo-political Competition, Economic Cooperation, Cultural Exchange and Business Ties. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2020, 15–30
• “20 shiji er sanshi niandai Hu Yuzhi dui Yindu fan zhimin yundong renzhi diebian chutan” 20世紀二三十年代胡愈之對印度反殖民運動認知迭變初探 [Changes in Hu Yuzhi’s understanding of the Indian anticolonial movement in the 1920s and 30s], in Tansen Sen and Sun Yinggang eds., Zhong-Yin guanxi yanjiu de shiye yu qianjing 中印關係研究的視野與前景 [Horizons and Futures of Studies in China-India Relations]. Shanghai 上海: Fudan University Press 復旦大學出版社, 2016, 230–41
• “Class politics and the entrenchment of the party-state in modern China,” in Lion Koenig and Bidisha Chaudhuri eds., Politics of the Other in India and China: Western Concepts in Non-Western Contexts. London: Routledge, 2016, 115–26

Book Reviews

• Review of Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912–1949, Yajun Mo, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2021, Journal of Tourism History, vol. 14, no. 1 (2022): 120–22
• Review of Realistic Revolution: Contesting Chinese History, Culture, and Politics after 1989, Els Von Dongen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, Modern Chinese Languages and Cultures, August 2020, https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/tsui/
• Review of Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies, Sayaka Chatani, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2018, Social Science Japan Journal, vol. 23, no. 2 (2020): 332–34
• Review of Twentieth-Century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday, and the World, Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman eds., London: Routledge, 2012, The China Journal, no.71 (January 2014): 288–90
• Review of New Narratives of Urban Space in Republican Chinese Cities: Emerging Social, Legal, and Governance Orders, Billy K. L. So and Madeleine Zelin eds., Leiden: Brill, 2013, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, vol.15, no.2 (2013): 146–48