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.
-
China's diplomacy has taken a strikingly "undiplomatic" turn, analysts say, as it counters U.S. accusations of starting the coronavirus. -
The Communist Party says authorities acted swiftly and efficiently to contain the coronavirus outbreak. Officials are working to silence those suspected of challenging the narrative. -
China's economy contracted by 6.8% in the first three months of 2020 from the same period a year ago — its biggest drop since 1992. -
NPR's global health and development correspondent and NPR's Beijing correspondent answer more questions about the global response to the pandemic.
-
Zhang Hai's father died of the coronavirus on Feb. 1 and was cremated. Ashes can now be picked up, but the government requires a chaperone for visits to the crematorium as well as for burials. -
The end of the city's 76-day lockdown is a milestone in China's efforts to contain the outbreak of the coronavirus that sickened more than 80,000 across the country and overwhelmed health systems. -
As restrictions are relaxed in parts of China where the coronavirus struck, residents in Beijing are cautiously returning to the public spaces they love. -
The 83-year-old, weightlifting pulmonologist is widely seen as a source of reliable information — although one recent comment seems to have been politicized by the government. -
The U.S. and China have clashed over the handling of the coronavirus outbreak. China is using its soft power to compete with the U.S. for influence during the pandemic.
-
NPR interviewed four residents of Wuhan who contracted the virus, recovered — but then had a retest that turned positive. What does that mean for China's recovery from COVID-19?
