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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Dozens of makeshift centers were built but stand empty. Officials want to revive a stagnating economy and attract young workers to cities by turning the structures into affordable housing.
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Turkey isn't just a Thanksgiving dish in Taiwan: it's also a common topping over rice. And how turkey became big in Taiwan has a lot to do with the U.S.
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China is making changes to the global infrastructure initiative after some initial stumbles in its first decade — and it's now in direct competition with the U.S.
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The death of a former Chinese leader Li Keqiang, who was 68, has been an outlet for people to quietly share their discontent with China's current governance.
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Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has died of a heart attack. A respected development economist, he was overshadowed as premier by Xi Jinping.
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Inside China, the government is cracking down on queer and feminist spaces. The Chinese-speaking diaspora is stepping up to create those spaces outside China.
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A month ago, a record number of Chinese fighter planes — 103 of them — flew around Taiwan in just one day. The strategy is meant to wear Taiwan down without ever invading.
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China's economic recovery has been dramatically slower than expected. Its biggest property firms are courting bankruptcy, and youth unemployment is at a record high. How did China get there?
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As military tensions with China rise, Taiwan's companies are pivoting from civilian manufacturing to defense and weapons. -
The Malaysian East Coast Rail Link is a successful feat so far compared to some other Chinese investments in the country — even if it has blown past deadlines and budgets.
