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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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart met for the first time in Singapore on Friday, as Washington and Beijing seek to head off potential conflict in the region. -
The drills are a warning to Taiwan's new president, who this week called on China in his inaugural address to cease its intimidation of Taiwan. -
Fentanyl made from Chinese chemicals is killing tens of thousands of Americans. A House committee report found new evidence the Chinese government supports tax breaks to subsidize the drug trade.
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About 250 Filipinos live on Thitu Island, the largest and most inhabited island of the Spratlys, in the South China Sea. But Chinese ships are never far away. -
The day after what was the worst quake to hit the Asian island in a quarter century, most residents cannot stop talking about how much worse it could have been. -
The U.S. Geological Survey gave the magnitude as 7.4. The quake collapsed buildings and created a tsunami that washed ashore on southern Japanese islands. At least 9 people died, officials said. -
Pro-Beijing lawmakers fast-tracked the legislation, with tough punishment for acts considered "external interference," insurrection and other offenses. -
Taiwan says its newly developed type of pineapple is just the latest agricultural property taken by China. -
The country's premier announces a round of fiscal stimulus to boost employment, but warns its legions of bureaucrats to gird themselves for a period of fiscal austerity. -
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.
