His expertise lies in Chinese economic and business history; the global history of capitalism, technology, and industry; quantitative data analysis; and digital humanities. His book project, “Engineering Modern China: Industrial Factories and the Transformation of the Chinese Economy in the Long Twentieth Century,” was the first to analyze the remarkable creation of the Chinese factory economy from the late Qing to post-Mao era.
He is the founder of the Chinese Factory Project, a digital humanities initiative that collects and publicizes archival materials and quantitative datasets on China’s industrial development, technological change, and resource utilization. He is also working on two new book projects: one on Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations in the 1980s, and another on a global history of China’s economic and social transitions in the reform era.
His work has appeared in high-impact academic journals such as World Development, Pacific Affairs, and Entreprises et Histoire, and his research has received funding from Harvard University, Harvard Business School, the D. Kim Foundation for Science and Technology, the Association for Asian Studies, and Business History Conference, among others.
Zeng has M.Phil. in social science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas, Austin. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was visiting assistant professor of East Asian History at the University of Pittsburgh.