Frank Langfitt

Nationalist Rhetoric High As Japanese Head To Polls

Credit Buddhika Weerasinghe / Getty Images

Supporters hold up posters of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a rally in Osaka on Thursday. Considered a nationalist hawk, Abe is expected to become prime minister for a second time after parliamentary elections Sunday.

Credit Yoshikazu Tsuno / Getty Images

Japanese nationalists condemn China at a rally in Tokyo in September. Japan and China are locked in a bitter dispute over a group of islands claimed by both countries.

By Frank Langfitt

Originally published on Mon December 17, 2012 9:27 am

Listen

As Japanese head to the polls Sunday, Shinzo Abe is expected to become Japan's prime minister for the second time.

The election takes place as nationalistic rhetoric is on the rise, and while the country remains locked in a bitter dispute with its chief rival, China, over islands both countries claim.

'Pride And Honor'

The battle over the islands heated up last summer.

In mid-August, boats filled with about 150 Japanese activists approached one of the islands, part of a chain that the Japanese call Senkaku; the Chinese, Diaoyu.

2:24 am

Thu December 13, 2012

A Rare Visit Inside A Chinese Courtroom

Next image Previous image

Credit Courtesy of Hongkou District Court

An NPR reporter recently was allowed to watch legal proceedings at Hongkou District Court — a rare opportunity for a foreign correspondent in Shanghai.

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

Shanghai's Hongkou District Court holds open houses every few months and live-streams select cases.

By Frank Langfitt

Originally published on Thu December 13, 2012 8:03 am

Listen

After years of covering China, I finally set foot in a Chinese courtroom last week. Foreign reporters need government permission to enter Chinese courts and past attempts had gone nowhere.

7:21 am

Wed November 28, 2012

OK, North Korea's Leader Isn't 'Sexiest Man Alive,' Chinese Media Concede

Credit People's Daily Online (frame grab of a page that has now been removed)

Before it disappeared from the Web: Here's how People's Daily Online packaged its coverage of the "news" that Kim Jong Un is 2012's sexiest man.

By Frank Langfitt

Originally published on Wed November 28, 2012 9:56 am

NPR Shanghai correspondent Frank Langfitt sends in an update on one of this week's more amusing stories:

4:15 am

Tue November 27, 2012

How Ordinary Chinese Are Talking, And Fighting, Back

Next image Previous image

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

Authorities in Hunan province sentenced Tang Hui to 18 months in a re-education-through-labor camp after she repeatedly complained about the way police investigated the case of her daughter's kidnapping and forced prostitution. An uproar on Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, pushed authorities to free Tang days later.

Credit Carlos Barria / Reuters/Landov

A man holds an iPhone as he visits Sina's Weibo microblogging site in Shanghai earlier this year.

By Frank Langfitt

Originally published on Tue November 27, 2012 7:53 pm

Listen

Never have so many Chinese people spoken so freely than on Weibo, China's answer to Twitter. Just 4 years old, the series of microblog services now has more than 400 million users.

And, increasingly, Chinese are using it to expose corruption, criticize officials and try to make their country a better place — even as China's Communist Party tries to control the Weibo revolution.

Were it not for Weibo, you would never know Tang Hui's extraordinary story. She wouldn't be free to tell it; she'd be sitting in a Chinese re-education-through-labor camp eating porridge.

12:18 pm

Thu November 15, 2012

In Rural China, New Leaders Aren't Familiar Faces

Next image Previous image

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

Wang Heying, 64, supports the new Communist leaders, even if she can barely name them. She says government policies have led street lamps, bigger houses and a TV in every home.

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

Villagers in Dongjiangai, in eastern China's Jiangsu province, watch the presentation of the Communist Party's new leadership on national TV Thursday. They say they support the new leaders because of the improvements government policies have brought to their village.

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

Dongjianggai, a farming village, lies about 200 miles northwest of Shanghai.

By Frank Langfitt

Originally published on Fri November 16, 2012 10:55 am

Listen

An elderly couple is winnowing rice in the front yard of their home in the tiny village of Dongjianggai, about 200 miles northwest of Shanghai. They've just watched China's incoming leaders — including Xi Jinping, the new general secretary of the Communist Party — appear for the first time on national TV.

"We don't know them," the husband, Wu Beiling, says. "Xi Jinping was just unveiled. I'm not very familiar with the rest of the members."

Pages

Frank Langfitt is NPR's Shanghai Correspondent. He covers the epic story of China's economic rise and its implications at home and abroad for Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation and Planet Money. Along with Beijing Correspondent Louisa Lim, he also covers Japan and the Koreas.

Before moving to China, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He covered Somalia's civil war from the front-lines in Mogadishu, where he learned to run fast in Kevlar. He interviewed cattle rustlers in South Sudan and chatted up imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the reform movement in Bahrain.

Prior to Africa, Langfitt was a labor correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He covered the 2008 financial crisis, roamed the hills of West Virginia investigating coal mine disasters and worked the union halls of Detroit as General Motors and Chrysler collapsed into bankruptcy.

Shanghai is Langfitt's second posting in China. Before coming to NPR, he spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun. During that time, he covered the Hong Kong handover, the fall of Suharto in Indonesia and reported from Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam. In the opening days of the Afghan War, Langfitt also reported from Pakistan and Kashmir.

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.

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. Before becoming a reporter, Langfitt drove a taxi in Philadelphia and dug latrines in Mexico. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

Now Playing

Frank Langfitt

Pages

Asia

3:40 pm

Fri December 14, 2012