Yuan is the Financial Times’ deputy Beijing bureau chief. She mainly covers China's technology sector and policy. She is particularly interested in the intersection of technology with politics, censorship, civil society, digital security and labour issues. Yuan is the co-founder of Rethinking Economics, a charity headquartered in Manchester, UK that campaigns to make economics teaching more relevant to the 21st century.
Yuan is also an elected officer of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, which seeks to protect press freedoms.