Emily Feng
Emily Feng is NPR's Beijing correspondent.
Feng joined NPR in 2019. She roves around China, through its big cities and small villages, reporting on social trends as well as economic and political news coming out of Beijing. Feng contributes to NPR's newsmagazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms.
Previously, Feng served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. Based in Beijing, she covered a broad range of topics, including human rights and technology. She also began extensively reporting on the region of Xinjiang during this period, becoming the first foreign reporter to uncover that China was separating Uyghur children from their parents and sending them to state-run orphanages, and discovering that China was introducing forced labor in Xinjiang's detention camps.
Feng's reporting has also let her nerd out over semiconductors and drones, travel to environmental wastelands, and write about girl bands and art. She's filed stories from the bottom of a coal mine; the top of a mosque in Qinghai; and from inside a cave Chairman Mao once lived in.
Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards in 2018, recognized by the Amnesty Media Awards in February 2019 and won a Human Rights Press merit that May. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China earned her another Human Rights Press Award, was recognized by the National Headliners Award, and won a Gracie Award. She was also named a Livingston Award finalist in 2021.
Feng graduated cum laude from Duke University with a dual B.A. degree from Duke's Sanford School in Asian and Middle Eastern studies and in public policy.
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A booming migrant workforce helped propel China's growth in the past four decades. Now those workers are approaching retirement age and straining local governments and social services. -
Their parents saw decades of significant economic expansion. But today, China's young workforce faces the prospects of slower economic growth. -
Taiwan chose a president and legislature — in an election China was closely watching. A U.S. delegation is in Taipei, part of Washington's close diplomacy with both China and Taiwan.
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Lai Ching-te of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is Taiwan's new president-elect, after a three-way election that will determine the self-ruled island's future stance towards China.
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Lai Ching-te of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party is Taiwan's new president-elect, after a three-way election that will determine the self-ruled island's future stance towards China. -
Voters in Taiwan go to the polls Saturday to pick a new president and legislature. It's being watched closely because democratic Taiwan works closely with the U.S., but it is also claimed by China.
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As Taiwan heads to an election, false information on social media has been picked up by TV networks — much of it appearing to originate from Taiwan itself. -
Tensions between Taiwan and China are growing. But despite the rift, they maintain tight cultural connections — pop culture, that is.
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China routinely ramps up its intimidation toward Taiwan before any elections because Beijing claims it has control over the self-ruling Asian island. -
What it means to be "Taiwanese" varies from one generation to the next, influenced by the island's complicated history with China. NPR talks with members of one family across generations.
