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.
-
Music is a big part of Taiwan’s culture. The island even has its own special type of opera. In one temple, a small theater troupe is preparing a special performance -- just for the gods.
-
A Taiwanese opera troupe prepares a lavish, multi-day performance - for the gods.
-
An upcoming Taiwanese television show is generating buzz for imagining what a Chinese invasion of the democratic island would look like.
-
China has banned transnational adoption, ending more-than three decades during which more than 160,000 children were adopted abroad. Adoptees say they have conflicted feelings about the ban.
-
The island nation of Palau is at the center of tensions involving the U.S., China and Taiwan. It's a delicate geopolitical balancing act that Palau has had to do since its inception.
-
Palau made history a decade ago when it closed off 80% of its oceans to any kind of fishing. A proposal to open up some of its marine sanctuary to fishing has divided residents on how best to protect the oceans around the Pacific nation.
-
Do you sometimes wish you could clone yourself to complete all your work? Companies in China are creating digital avatars using generative artificial intelligence to do just that.
-
Online store owners in China are protesting against what they say are heavy and arbitrary fines imposed by Temu, one of the world's biggest e-commerce platforms.
-
Do you sometimes wish you could clone yourself to get all the work you have done? Companies in China are creating digital avatars using generative artificial intelligence to do just that.
-
A lawsuit alleging a U.S. company used forced prison labor in China could have ripple effects across supply chains.