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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Luis Inácio Lula da Silva will be sworn in as Brazil's new leader — just three years after being released from prison on corruption charges and 12 years after his first two terms as president.
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A New Year's Day tradition returns without pandemic restrictions. Mechanical engineering student Benny Cruz describes the design and construction of the float he'll be driving.
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NPR's Emily Feng talks with Abao, one of Taiwan's biggest pop stars. She is Paiwan, an indigenous people that lived on the island before Han Chinese colonized it more than 300 years ago.
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The U.S. will require travelers from China to take COVID tests from Jan. 5. CDC officials have also expressed concerns about new variants originating from China, which is experiencing a surge.
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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. -
Taiwan has lived under the threat of attack from China for years. The island is preparing for the worst-case scenario, however unlikely — and they have a long way to go.
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China is dropping COVID quarantine requirements for foreigners and says it will start reissuing some visas — after nearly three years of complete border closures.
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Hospital staff and space are short in Beijing as a surge in COVID infections overwhelms China.
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Health officials are concerned that people traveling home to their villages for the Lunar New Year could turn celebrations into superspreader events, catching ill-prepared rural systems off guard. -
For nearly three years, China used extremely strict testing and lockdown policies to keep COVID out. Then it abruptly lifted nearly all those controls as a COVID surge spread across the country.
