Frank Langfitt

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.

In China, Apple Halts Sales Of New iPhone

By Frank Langfitt

Listen

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Apple has halted store sales of its iPhone 4S in China after fights erupted outside its flagship outlet in Beijing.

As NPR's Frank Langfitt reports, scalpers and angry would-be customers marked the phone's Chinese launch.

FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: At the Apple store in Beijing's Sanlitun shopping district, scalpers scuffled overnight causing the store to keep its door shut. Some in the crowd responded by hurling eggs at the windows.

3:00 pm

Wed January 4, 2012

In China, Curious Case Of Fraud Grows Stranger Still

Next image Previous image

Credit STR / AFP/Getty Images

Doris Phua, chief executive of Da Vinci, answers questions during a press conference in Beijing in July, after CCTV accused it of selling fake furniture at high prices. Later, the company said it paid the CCTV reporter more than $150,000 through a public relations company to halt further stories.

Credit STR / AFP/Getty Images

In July 2011, Chinese state-run TV accused the luxury furniture retailer Da Vinci of passing off made-in-China goods as expensive Italian designer items. Now, a new report in a respected Chinese business magazine, Caixin, says the TV report was full of errors, and Da Vinci says it was blackmailed by the TV journalist.

By Frank Langfitt

The Da Vinci furniture company showroom in Shanghai looks like a salon in Versailles. The price tag on a gilt-covered, Italian-made grandfather clock: more than $40,000.

So it was big news last summer when China Central Television — the government's flagship network known as CCTV — reported that some of Da Vinci's ornate furniture didn't come from Italy, but from a common factory in South China.

2:17 am

Mon January 2, 2012

Desire For Stability Keeps China, N. Korea Allies

Credit Mark Ralston / AFP/Getty Images

Trucks loaded with Chinese goods head across the Yalu Bridge and into North Korea one day after the memorial service for the late leader Kim Jong Il, at the Chinese North Korean border town of Dandong on December 30, 2011.

By Frank Langfitt

Chinese leaders made a rare condolence visit to North Korea's embassy in Beijing last month.

Broadcast on China Central Television, the leaders – dressed in black suits — bowed in unison towards the portrait of Kim Jong Il. Why show so much respect to a man who had so much misery?

One reason: fear of something worse.

3:00 am

Tue December 13, 2011

After Boom, China's Property Market Heads Lower

By Frank Langfitt

Listen

In recent years, China's real estate market has boomed. A three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai overlooking the river would cost more than $3 million. But that's beginning to change. The slide comes as the world's most dynamic economy grapples with other challenges, including massive local government debt and slowing growth.

Asia

11:01 pm

Sun December 11, 2011

Despite Growth, China Too Faces Debt Problems

Next image Previous image

Credit Frank Langfitt/NPR

Cui Jinmin oversees an abandoned strip of unfinished highway in western China's Shaanxi province. Cui says the government stopped paying his workers in April and they went home in July.

Credit Frank Langfitt/NPR

Work on this $1.5 billion highway in western China's Shaanxi province mostly halted after the government ran out of money. China has spent large sums to help keep its economy growing in recent years, but many local governments now face big debt burdens.

By Frank Langfitt

As the U.S. and Europe have struggled with debt, China has seemed to be largely immune. This fall, the European Union even asked China for financial help, but China has a debt problem of its own.

Over the past several years, local governments have run up at least $1.5 trillion in bank loans for infrastructure projects intended to prop up the nation's economic growth. Analysts think much of that money will never be repaid.

Now Playing

Most Active Stories

Frank Langfitt

Pages

NPR Story

2:00 pm

Fri January 13, 2012