Emily Feng Emily Feng is an international correspondent for NPR covering China, Taiwan and beyond.
Emily Feng at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., March 19, 2019. (photo by Allison Shelley)
Stories By

Emily Feng

Allison Shelley/NPR
Emily Feng at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., March 19, 2019. (photo by Allison Shelley)
Allison Shelley/NPR

Emily Feng

International Correspondent

Emily Feng is an international correspondent for NPR covering China, Taiwan and beyond.

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 inside a cave Chairman Mao once lived in.

She was 2023 winner of the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, awarded to a rising public media journalist 35 years of age or younger. She also received the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award for her overall reporting on the Asia Pacific.

Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards in 2018 and won two Human Rights Press awards. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China was recognized by the National Headliners Award. She spearheaded coverage that has won two Gracie Awards. 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.

Story Archive

Friday

American Institute in Taiwan director Sandra Oudkirk. American Institute in Taiwan hide caption

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American Institute in Taiwan

Taiwan is driving China-U.S. tensions. Meet the person right in the middle

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Thursday

Sunday

U.S. lifts sanctions on Chinese police institute accused of human rights abuses

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Wednesday

A worker prepares to weld a steel structure at a construction site in Beijing on May 8, 2021. Greg Baker/AFP hide caption

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Greg Baker/AFP

Wednesday

China is revamping its global Belt and Road Initiative

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Thursday

Why the sudden death of a former Chinese premier has moved so many people

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Sunday

China's foreign minister met with Secretary of State Blinken

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Friday

Newly retired Chinese premier Li Keqiang dies at 68

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is shown speaking during a reception at the Great Hall of the People on the eve of China's National Day in Beijing on September 30, 2022. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

Thursday

China subtly increases pressure on Taiwan

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Wednesday

China suppresses feminist, LGBTQ groups. Outside China, they seek to rebuild

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Tuesday

Li Shangfu in Singapore on June 1. He served as China's defense minister this year but Chinese leaders removed him on Tuesday. Lionel Ng/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

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Lionel Ng/Bloomberg via Getty Images

China removes Li Shangfu as defense minister, who was out of public eye for 2 months

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Friday

China is subtly increasing military pressure on Taiwan without declaring an invasion

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Thursday

Spectators wave Chinese flags as military vehicles carrying DF-41 ballistic missiles roll during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China in Beijing, Oct. 1, 2019. The latest assessment from the defense department said China had increased its arsenal of operational nuclear warheads from the estimated 400 in 2021 to more than 500 as of May this year. Mark Schiefelbein/AP hide caption

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Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Wednesday

Australian journalist Cheng Lei speaks on the phone, on arrival at Melbourne Airport in Melbourne, October 11, 2023. AAP Image/Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) via REUTERS hide caption

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AAP Image/Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) via REUTERS

Sunday

Wednesday

This photo taken on June 14, 2023 shows university graduates and youths attending a job fair in Yibin, in China's southwestern Sichuan province. Unemployment among Chinese youths jumped to a record 20.8 percent in May, the National Bureau of Statistics said on June 15, 2023, as the economy's post-Covid growth spurt fades. CNS/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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CNS/AFP/Getty Images

Monday

China's suffering real estate, construction sectors spark fear of economic stagnation

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Tuesday

Tuesday

How China got to its current economic state

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Concerns grow as post-COVID economic recovery in China flounders

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Thursday

Ancient cave art along China's silk road is damaged in harsh rains

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Friday

Po Sheng Lai, the founder of Shern Yeong Precise Optical, a company in the northern Taiwanese city of Yilan that makes high-end glass is pivoting to making defense products. Emily Feng/NPR hide caption

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Emily Feng/NPR

Taiwan's companies make the world's electronics. Now they want to make weapons

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