Emily Feng
Biography
Emily Feng has been NPR’s Beijing Correspondent since 2019. Her first book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom, will be published in 2024 from Crown. An exploration of Chinese identity in Xi Jinping's China, the book will be told from the perspective of those he and the government are desperate to control, spotlighting those caught in the political fray due to their religion, gender, language, or political views, and will capture a wide and complex picture of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and beyond.
Formerly a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, today Feng reports on social trends as well as economic and political news around mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. She contributes to NPR's newsmagazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms. In 2022 she was a guest host of NPR’s flagship evening program, All Things Considered.
While at the Financial Times, she covered a broad range of topics, including human rights and technology. She also began reporting extensively 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.
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 pandemic 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. She is the recipient of the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award from Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
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.