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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China's economic recovery has been dramatically slower than expected, its biggest property firms are courting bankruptcy, and youth unemployment is at a record high.
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China's economic recovery has been dramatically slower than expected. Its biggest property firms are courting bankruptcy, and youth unemployment is at a record high. How did China get there?
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Flash floods and years of unusual rainfall — likely linked to climate change — are degrading ancient cave art along China's historic silk road at a rapid pace.
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As military tensions with China rise, Taiwan's companies are pivoting from civilian manufacturing to defense and weapons. -
Chinese Muslims take roundabout trips for their Hajj pilgrimage, trying to circumvent China's tightened surveillance at every turn — and possible arrest on their return, pilgrims and tour leaders say. -
Taiwan's vice president transits through the U.S. this weekend on a trip to South America. China is watching closely.
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Poet Tahir Hamut Izgil left the Chinese region of Xinjiang amid a government crackdown on the Uyghur people. He writes about that in his book, Waiting to be Arrested at Night.
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Tahir Hamut Izgil is one of the best-known living Uyghur poets. He left Xinjiang amid a Chinese crackdown on the Uyghur people — an escape at the heart of his book, Waiting To Be Arrested At Night.
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A visit to a harvest festival in Taiwan, a celebration of summer by the island's indigenous communities.
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The Malaysian East Coast Rail Link is a successful feat so far compared to some other Chinese investments in the country — even if it has blown past deadlines and budgets.
