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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People remember their loved ones and peers who died during China's latest COVID surge. Their deaths contradict China's artificially low COVID death toll.
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Residents held vigils to commemorate people who have died in lockdown. Several have been arrested. -
China has officially opened borders to inbound travelers for the first time in nearly three years.
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Popular tourist sites around the world are preparing for a surge in Chinese tourists now that China has loosened its COVID-related border restrictions.
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The U.S. will require travelers from China to take COVID tests from Jan. 5. CDC officials have also expressed concerns about new variants originating from China, which is experiencing a surge.
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Abao sings in the Paiwan language — not Chinese, which dominates Taiwan's pop music industry. Her popularity reflects the island's overdue recognition and awareness of Indigenous culture.
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Health officials are concerned that people traveling home to their villages for the Lunar New Year could turn celebrations into superspreader events, catching ill-prepared rural systems off guard.
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China has reported very few deaths in a massive nationwide COVID-19 surge, but crematoriums and funeral homes say they are overwhelmed.
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Jiang Zemin rose to power in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests and leaves a legacy of economic reforms — but also tight political control.
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Residents held late-night demonstrations against draconian "zero-COVID" lockdown measures after 10 people were killed in an apartment fire. Protests in China are extremely rare.
