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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Nine activists and lawmakers were sentenced to prison terms Friday for their participation in the 2019 anti-government protests. -
The arrest of food delivery worker Chen Guojiang dealt a blow to nascent efforts to promote couriers' rights as they've gained broader public attention during the coronavirus pandemic. -
Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was supposed to be one of China's most advanced chipmakers. Now it's bankrupt — a big flop at a time when the country seeks technological self-reliance. -
Clothing companies H&M, Nike and Adidas face boycotts for their refusal to use cotton from China's Xinjiang region. -
Weibo users face criminal charges after online comments — made in and outside China — casting doubt on the casualty number the Chinese government reported months after a brawl with Indian soldiers. -
Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested in China and charged with espionage shortly after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhoi was arrested in British Columbia at the request of the U.S. -
Top officials from China and the U.S. met face-to-face in Alaska today. So far the talks have been tense, with both sides exchanging heated words.
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Chinese officials boast their campaign against "evil" has busted over 50,000 supposed criminal organizations, but experts warn it has served another function: consolidating power. -
Rights lawyers became targets in President Xi Jinping's push to put the Communist Party above the law. Now they're losing their licenses. -
The coronavirus is "very unlikely" to have started in a Chinese lab but its path from animals to humans needs further investigation, a World Health Organization team said after visiting Wuhan.
