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.
-
The staunch advocate of social justice and rural development was found guilty of eight charges. His harsh prison sentence comes amid broader efforts by authorities to rein in powerful businessmen. -
Qin Gang brought a tougher style to China's foreign ministry pulpit. Now he is Beijing's man in Washington, inheriting a hard post amid the most fraught relations in years between China and the U.S. -
Flooding continues to devastate the city of Zhengzhou in the central Chinese province of Henan, where thousands remain stranded without power or food. -
The officially designated Communist Party historical sites venerate Mao Zedong and, increasingly, the country's current leader, Xi Jinping. Tourists sometimes do manual labor and dress up as soldiers. -
Marking 100 years since its founding, China's Communist Party is trying to keep its revolutionary spirit alive. How? Training its cadres at party history boot camp. -
One day after the Biden administration accused China of a massive hack of Microsoft's email server software, Beijing said the U.S. has been mounting cyberattacks for the past 11 years. -
Last July, five men escaped from Hong Kong by speedboat as Beijing mounted a crackdown. On the 24th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule, one of these men recounts his story.
-
In a fiery speech at Tiananmen Square, Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping vowed to keep an iron grip on Hong Kong and to conquer Tiawan, and warned foreign forces against trying to bully China. -
Apple Daily was closed, universities were muzzled and prominent activists were either jailed or exiled. The national security law has surely made an impact in Hong Kong in its first year in force. -
The pro-democracy newspaper will run its last edition on Saturday — signaling the end to Hong Kong's once freewheeling and muckraking reporting environment as well.
