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 is closely watching whether Israel and Iran can broker a ceasefire. Beijing gets much of its crude oil imports from Iran through a "dark fleet" of vessels to evade American sanctions. -
After talks in London this week, the two countries say they're largely going back to a framework they already agreed on in May. -
Chinese exports of rare earth minerals, which are vital to carmakers and other industries, and China's access to high-end technology from the U.S., including computer chips, are high on the agenda. -
It's the first known call between the two leaders since Inauguration Day — and the first time they've spoken since tariffs began ratcheting up. -
The announcement to revoke visas is the most drastic move yet to curtail the numbers of international students studying in the U.S. -
In his forthcoming book, The Party's Interests Come First, American University professor Joseph Torigian writes about Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, a noted Chinese politician himself. -
A 90-day pause on triple-digit U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods has left exporters and importers in a high state of uncertainty. Factory owners in China tell NPR that orders are down overall. -
Collecting Trump's tariffs could be tricky. The agencies that screen imports say they're frequently overwhelmed and understaffed, and experts say exporters are becoming cannier at evading taxes. -
U.S. levies on Chinese goods will drop from at least 145% to 30% for an initial period of 90 days, while Chinese levies are set to fall from at least 125% to 10% on American goods. -
Trade negotiators from the U.S. and China are starting talks this weekend in Switzerland. These are the first high-level trade talks between the two countries since President Trump returned to the White House.
