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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President Biden's Summit for Democracy has kicked off. China is not invited — but it's still trying to project its own narratives about democracy. -
The announcement reflects the rapid reversal in Didi Chuxing's fortunes as China goes on a regulatory blitz targeting some of the country's biggest private technology firms. -
"If she does not make it past the coming winter, I hope the world will remember her as she once was," Zhang Zhan's brother said. She posted videos of Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic. -
Citizens in Ruili are complaining about lengthy lockdowns and terrible conditions in quarantine centers. Others in China don't want to hear about it. -
In a social media post Tuesday night, Peng Shuai described her assault years earlier at the hands of Zhang Gaoli. It's the first public accusation of sexual assault against a senior Party officer. -
On Sunday, people weren't allowed to leave the park due to contact tracing after a woman tested positive for COVID-19 after her visit. It's the latest in China's strict measures to fight the disease. -
China is removing domes and minarets from thousands of mosques. Authorities are taking down overtly Islamic architecture as part of a "sinicization" push to make them seem more traditionally Chinese. -
It's cricket fighting season in China, so NPR went ringside to learn about the centuries-old sport. Turns out, the bugs are really high maintenance, big money's involved and big mandibles matter. -
Many Uyghurs living in Afghanistan want to leave now that the Taliban are back in control. They fear that the Chinese government could push the Taliban to deport them to China. -
China has more than enough capacity to generate energy. Here's why it is having to ration power, causing effects for consumers and supply chains around the world.
