Historian of modern east Asia, focusing on China and Taiwan, but with broader interests extending across social, economic, political and technological exchange and competition between imperial powers in the region, particularly China, Great Britain and Japan.

Dr Tsai’s principal interests are in Chinese modernisation and its engagement in globalisation from the 19th century onwards, in particular the role of the foreign-run Chinese Maritime Customs Service; communications networks, including the Chinese Postal Service and private letter hongs; economic botany, trade and scientific networks across east and south-east Asia, especially in relation to economic botany and material exchange; and Chinese newspapers in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries.

Her second monograph, The Making of China’s Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation was published by Harvard University Press in 2024. Translation work for a Chinese edition is well-progressed and the book is expected to appear in 2026. Other work includes an earlier monograph, Reading Shenbao: Nationalism, Consumerism, and Individuality in China 1919-37, and a co-edited volume Print, Profit and Perception: Ideas, Information and Knowledge in Chinese Societies, 1895-1949. 

Recently published papers include ‘China’s Debut at the Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 and the Forgotten Port Catalogues’ (2022). The article examines the work of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and trade culture at treaty ports though engaging with an important and yet forgotten publication entitled Port Catalogues of the Chinese Maritime Customs’ Collection at the Austro-Hungarian Universal Exhibition, Vienna, 1873. Her another recent article, ‘At the Qing Empire’s Taiwan Frontier: Identities of the Chinese Maritime Customs Commissioners during the Sino-French War and the First Sino-Japanese War,’ was published in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, December 2024. This article was part of a special journal issue co-edited by Dr Tsai.

She currently works on two projects: economic botany in Taiwan and the history of Chinese private letter hongs (民信局). 

Economic Botany: By collaborating with the Institute of Taiwan History (Academia Sinica) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, she is working on shared histories between Taiwan and Kew Gardens in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. She explores the history of plant hunters in Taiwan, with particular attention to cotton.

Private letter hongs: While scholars have explored many aspects of China’s modernisation, one topic of fundamental importance only now receiving proper attention is that of the various communication networks that knitted the Qing empire together. Family-owned courier firms, or hongs, made up the largest of these networks, creating vital supply lines for information, money and goods and with a reach more fluid, adaptable and far wider than the government’s own information relay service. They provide tantalising evidence of bottom-up, locally-driven modernisation – yet little is known of their history and methods.

Enquires are welcome from prospective PhD students looking to study modern Chinese or broader modern east Asian history across any of the above topics.