Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, and terror attacks to the renewed push for , political tensions in and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including , , and . He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a . He expanded his reporting into a book, (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous � secret detention centers � as well as his own travails taking , which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from , covered the in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned , who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
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Something dark lies nestled inside a bucolic Shanghai park: a quaint cottage that is actually a secret detention center, known as a "black jail." Researchers say thousands of Chinese are detained each year in this draconian system of jails the state says doesn't exist.
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China's economic growth has been spectacular for three decades. But now it's slowing and there's a growing debate about the need to revamp a system that's been built on major infrastructure projects at home and low-cost goods for export.
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Han Han has boy-band good looks, drives race cars and has built a following of more than 8 million on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. He writes what many young Chinese think but dare not say publicly � criticizing everything from corrupt officials to the nation's conformist educational system.
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Amid China's run-ins with Japan and the Philippines over disputed islands this year, the U.S. Navy plans to send more ships to Asia, which China sees as an attempt to block its rise. America's allies in the region welcome more involvement, but they question whether America can afford to stay engaged in the region.
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Gathering voters to watch a presidential debate and then evaluate it is a long tradition in American journalism. So, I got to thinking: What would happen if I invited a bunch of interested foreigners � all of them Chinese citizens � to watch the presidential debate from my Shanghai office?
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In recent years, China's status � like its economy � has continued to rise as the economies in America and Europe have struggled. That shift isn't just reflected in economic numbers, and some American business people in China say they don't feel as respected or as valued as before.
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President Paul Kagame has changed the country by tackling problems that have plagued other African economies. He's also taking cues from East Asia's "Tiger" economies. But it's not all good news: Most citizens are still poor, and rights groups routinely blast Kagame.