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.
-
Taiwan votes for its next president this month. Low wages and the constant threat from China remain major issues in a dramatic and messy campaign season.
-
The Justice Department ended the controversial "China Initiative" nearly two years ago amid criticism of racial profiling. A House spending bill could revive the initiative.
-
Disinformation efforts are becoming more sophisticated in Taiwan, and often it's domestic platforms spreading false information.
-
China's 300 million migrant workers helped power its economic growth. Many are approaching retirement age however, with no social safety net to support them.
-
China's slowing economic growth is putting pressure on citizens in their 20s and 30s. They feel their future won't be as bright as that of their parents.
-
China's economy still hasn't fully recovered since Beijing lifted COVID-19 restrictions a year ago. But not everyone is hurting; an effort to spur high-tech industry is yielding some winners.
-
Hong Kong media mogul and democracy activist Jimmy Lai goes on trial after more than 1,000 days of pre-trial detention.
-
China has been sending ships and planes to encircle Taiwan and mounting more sophisticated military drills simulating a blockade of the island.
-
One key issue in Taiwan's 2024 presidential elections is whether to build more nuclear power plants. Proponents say they would protect the island's energy sources from potential threats from China.
-
A trained gynecologist, Gao became well-known across China for her relentless activism in exposing a man-made AIDS crisis and for her educational work to remove the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.