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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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. -
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. -
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. -
Cities are once again locking down thousands of neighborhoods and sending people into quarantine, even as local Chinese authorities are tasked with easing COVID restrictions. -
Russia fired a barrage of missiles at Ukraine Tuesday, killing at least one person. Hours later, Poland said there was an explosion on its territory near its border with Ukraine.
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The three-hour meeting between Xi and President Biden finished Monday with both leaders expressing an openness to restoring communication channels and repairing the U.S.-China relationship. -
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a high-stakes face-to-face meeting in Bali, Indonesia. -
There's a well-established industry centered in California that provides surrogate births and attracts Chinese mothers to the U.S. to engage in what's known as birth tourism. -
Two notable members were removed from the upper leadership ranks. The congress also approved the addition of new wording to the party charter that cements Xi's role as the so-called core of the party. -
China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower and Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s offer a look at the future of China's Communist Party.
