An international correspondent for NPR discussed her recent book on cultural identity in China and her career as a reporter in Asia at the Elliott School of International Affairs on Tuesday.

Emily Feng discussed her 2025 book, “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China,” an investigation into the identity and individuality of Chinese people, which she said seeks to challenge the “monolithic” understanding the American public has of the Chinese state. The U.S.-China Education Trust, a nonprofit organization that seeks to bolster American and Chinese relations, hosted the event as part of its new “China Connections” series, which features monthly presentations from experts on China.

The book follows the stories of nearly two dozen people resisting conformity to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s narrowing vision of what it means to be culturally and ideologically Chinese as he works to create a singular identity for the country. The subjects include a Uyghur family that was separated — the Chinese government was accused by governments and human rights groups of genocide against the Uyghurs in 2021 after reports that it had detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” — a human rights lawyer and a teacher from Mongolia who in 2020 refused to stop speaking his native language, which the Chinese government has limited in schools under the claim that school books in Mandarin Chinese are “higher quality.”

Feng said she began her career in journalism knowing she wanted to be a foreign correspondent hoping to report in Myanmar, but the high cost of living and upending of free speech policies by the government in 2015 made it infeasible. Feng said she instead went to China on a tourist visa and decided to stay because it offered an “amazingly diverse” range of stories to cover.

“This is obvious I think for anyone who’s written or lived in China, but China is just not a monolith,” Feng said. “This is about identity, and it’s about highlighting the organic diversity of identity in China.”

Feng said most Americans overlook the differing political values and individuality among Chinese people. She said when American policymakers talk about a “threat from China,” like cultural and economic espionage, they ignore Chinese cultural diversity, which creates negative perceptions of all Chinese people as having malicious intent or working for the government.

“That is treating a category of people in a country as a monolith, which is just not what happens, and it’s honestly not productive or effective in any way,” Feng said.

Feng said Western media coverage usually ignores the humanity of individuals in China. She said her work in China has centered on the diversity of cultures throughout the country by talking to people about their lives and views of the country’s politics and culture. 

“I think everyone is kind of interesting,” Feng said. “And I am on all platforms at all times messaging strangers, and sometimes they respond, and sometimes they end up as a character in a book.”

Feng said the country changed from when she first arrived in 2015 to when she left in 2022 and was not allowed back into the country due to the government’s attempts to control ethnic minorities through digital surveillance and restrictive COVID-19 protocols. She said digital surveillance became increasingly “pervasive,” which along with the tight health restrictions became “hindrances” to her reporting. 

“The book begins in kind of the economic heartland of mainland China, the East Coast, but it gradually takes us out to the historical borderlands of the Qing empire, finally to Taiwan,” Feng said. 

Feng said the book was a “project in empathy,” as she connected with individuals in China and shared their stories in her writing. She said she hopes those who follow U.S.-China relations learn from her book, but the people she writes have compelling stories as individuals aside from geopolitical relations. 

“Mostly I hope that people who don’t follow China, don’t monitor news about China can still pick up the book and go, ‘These are people whose stories are interesting on their own, not because they’re news, not because they affect geopolitics or the U.S.-China relationship in any way,’” Feng said.