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The cover of Let Only Red Flowers Bloom

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom

Emily Feng, 2025

Follow people across mainland China, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and America as they defend law, language, faith, and belonging against enforced sameness.

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8 parts, about 21 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Argues that the Chinese state is narrowing what being Chinese may mean, through language, religion, family roles and loyalty
  • Follows lawyers, entrepreneurs, Muslims, Mongolian teachers, Hong Kongers and exiles to show what enforced belonging costs real families
  • A reporter's firsthand account that keeps conflicting testimony in view and separates what was witnessed from what was told

Who it is for

  • Readers following Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the news
  • Diaspora Chinese wrestling with their own sense of identity
  • Students of nationalism and minority rights

What the summary covers

  1. Who gets to define a Chinese identity?2 min
  2. Law, wealth, and expression become conditional3 min
  3. A chained woman and an unresolved identity2 min
  4. Xinjiang: security, mass control, and one divided family3 min
  5. Religion and language under sinification3 min
  6. Hong Kong's legal firewall gives way3 min
  7. Taiwan's democratic boundary2 min
  8. Diaspora: resisting coercion without reproducing suspicion3 min

Recommended by

  • Evan OsnosNew Yorker writer and National Book Award winner
    Emily Feng delivers an exquisite, up-to-the-minute portrait of the China you can’t grasp from afar.
  • Barbara DemickJournalist and author of Nothing to Envy
    One of the top China correspondents of her generation, Feng faced unremitting harassment to bring these stories to light.

About the author

  • Emily FengJournalist and author focused on politics and human rights in China
    • Born and raised in Bethany, Connecticut, to Chinese parents
    • Studied Public Policy and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, graduating in 2015
    • Beijing correspondent for the Financial Times before joining NPR
    • NPR international correspondent 2019 to 2024, based in Beijing and Taipei
    • Won the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award and the 2023 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize
    • Moved to Washington, D.C. for NPR in 2025, covering foreign policy and US China relations

Read it alongside

  • Goes deeperThe Broken China Dream

    Emily Feng reads the 709 crackdown on lawyers as evidence that law was being made subordinate to political power, while Minxin Pei argues that Deng ruled out the rule of law as an enforcer of his reforms.

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