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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U.S. levies on Chinese goods will drop from at least 145% to 30% for an initial period of 90 days, while Chinese levies are set to fall from at least 125% to 10% on American goods. -
Trade negotiators from the U.S. and China are starting talks this weekend in Switzerland. These are the first high-level trade talks between the two countries since President Trump returned to the White House. -
Shein and Temu goods might not be so cheap anymore. Starting today, the U.S. will start collecting import fees on small packages from China, much of which comes from Chinese e-commerce sites. -
Many of the world's drone companies rely on China for parts. But China is cutting some U.S. drone makers off through sanctions as part of its retaliation for U.S. tariffs. Taiwan says it can help out.
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The U.S. built up a network of institutions supporting public diplomacy and scholarship after World War Two and throughout the Cold War. The Trump administration is dismantling these institutions.
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The numbers of Americans learning Mandarin Chinese has declined dramatically, but one elementary school in Washington DC is seeing more demand for Chinese language education than ever.
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The U.S. State Department said it would stop publishing global air pollution data as part of attempts to shrink federal spending. The program set a worldwide standard for measuring air quality.
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The Damascus neighborhood of the man who has been leading Syria's new caretaker government celebrates his new role and reflects on the last 14 years of civil war.
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President Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to shrink the federal government have cut off all funding to pro-democracy and human rights groups abroad, giving China an opportunity to muscle in. -
Rebel fighters who are now part of Syria's new de facto government have been destroying large shipments of Captagon, an addictive drug that was mass produced by the ousted Assad regime.
