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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Syrian soccer player Abdel Basset al-Sarout became the poster child for the Syrian revolution with his iconic protest anthems. In death, he has become its saint. But he didn't do it alone. -
Taiwan opera is revered across the Asian island. One of its most beloved traits is its gender-bending character archetypes, and its best-known actors are women who portray men.
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Abao sings in the Paiwan language — not Chinese, which dominates Taiwan's pop music industry. Her popularity reflects the island's overdue recognition and awareness of Indigenous culture. -
NPR's Emily Feng talks with the German-Syrian duo Shkoon, who are returning to their roots with the release of their new album FIRAQ.
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China has more than enough capacity to generate energy. Here's why it is having to ration power, causing effects for consumers and supply chains around the world. -
U.S. firms are confident about prospects in China despite a global coronavirus pandemic and stagnant bilateral relations, according to a new survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
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For decades, rising property prices helped enrich China. Now one of the country's biggest developers is facing bankruptcy. Policymakers fear it could send China's financial system into a tailspin. -
An intern accused a well-known TV anchor of forcibly kissing her. In a ruling this week, a Beijing court found that it could not determine whether sexual harassment had occurred. -
Fierce competition to get children into the top schools has spawned an aggressive parenting culture named for a traditional-medicine treatment in which chicken blood is injected to stimulate energy. -
What Beijing has offered the Taliban so far is an open hand and a hint of legitimacy. Taliban leaders have pledged to leave Chinese interests alone and not to harbor anti-China extremist groups.
