
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.
-
Tsai Ing-wen is in New York as part of a trip to Central America and the U.S. Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory and opposes interactions between Taiwan and other state officials.
-
The cofounder of Taiwan's famed Din Tai Fung restaurant chain died at 96, his company announced March 26. He helped turn delicate soup dumplings into a global phenomenon, even earning Michelin stars.
-
Honduras switched its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China in the latest setback for the Asian island's president. Now some of Taiwan's politicians say they need to take a different approach.
-
A bitter legal fight over the childhood home of Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, has come to define Singapore's ruling family.
-
China's society is aging quickly, straining public welfare and healthcare systems. Fearing the state may not be able to help them when they grow older, more young Chinese are turning to private pension funds.
-
Jiang Yanyong, the Chinese surgeon who blew the whistle on the country's SARS epidemic cover-up, has died of pneumonia in Beijing. He remained under state surveillance until his death.
-
Do high-profile visits from U.S. leaders to Taiwan hurt or help? Do they really matter?
-
One of Taiwan's darkest moments in history began in a radio station. Remembering that history is now even more complicated.
-
China has been quietly upgrading its ability to float balloons in "near space," which means they can be used for intelligence gathering and to improve hypersonic weapons systems.
-
The crowds were protesting over fears that officials will dip into their personal health savings accounts to cover public budget shortfalls. (Story aired on All Things Considered on Feb. 16, 2023.)