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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Pro-Beijing lawmakers fast-tracked the legislation, with tough punishment for acts considered "external interference," insurrection and other offenses. -
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. -
Their parents saw decades of significant economic expansion. But today, China's young workforce faces the prospects of slower economic growth. -
Lai Ching-te of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party is Taiwan's new president-elect, after a three-way election that will determine the self-ruled island's future stance towards China. -
China has been sending ships and planes to encircle Taiwan and mounting more sophisticated military drills simulating a blockade of the island. -
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. -
Dozens of makeshift centers were built and now stand empty. Now authorities want to revive a stagnating economy and attract young workers to cities by turning the structures into affordable housing. -
Chinese cities are turning quarantine centers built during the pandemic into affordable housing units for young workers — an attempt to help those who struggle in the current economic slowdown.
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Taiwan the "most important" and "most sensitive" issue driving U.S.-China tensions. Sandra Oudkirk is trying to navigate that tricky terrain. -
Li was groomed for leadership, and was seen at one point as a contender for China's top job, only to be pushed aside as Xi Jinping ascended.
