Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Top Chinese economist set for Bank job
By Richard McGregor in Beijing
Published: January 21 2008, FT
The World Bank will appoint a Chinese economist to a senior position in a move that will buttress the institution’s ties with Beijing and lift the profile of developing countries.
Lin Yifu, or Justin Lin, is expected to be appointed as the organisation’s chief economist, according to bank officials quoted by agencies and the Wall Street Journal.
Prof Lin is one of China’s leading economists, as the head of a think-tank at Peking University and an adviser to the central government.
Highly respected as an economist, his appointment will also strengthen Beijing’s ties to the World Bank.
The World Bank is trying to refurbish its relations with China, joining it as a development partner in Africa and trying to attract more Chinese to work with it in Washington and elsewhere.
Prof Lin has written extensively on China’s famine during the “Great Leap Forward” in the early 1960s, when tens of millions died, and more recently was instrumental in shaping Beijing’s new policy to reinvigorate the rural economy.
The so-called “New Socialist Countryside” policy was the centrepiece of the government’s economic programme announced at the annual session of China’s parliament in 2006.
His recent research has focused the continuing role of the state in China’s economy, and the potential challenge its success poses to conventional theories about the greater efficiencies of the private sector.
Prof Lin gained a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1986 and has twice been awarded China’s top economics honour, the Sun Yefang Prize, in 1993 and 2001.
But Prof Lin is just as well known for his own extraordinary personal history as he is for his professional achievements.
Prof Lin defected from Taiwan in 1979, when stationed as a soldier on the heavily fortified island of Kinmen, just off the coast of China, near Fujian province.
Most famously, Prof Lin, according to the story he himself has told friends, swam from Taiwan to reach the mainland.
Taipei decided on “humanitarian” grounds in 2002 to allow Mr Lin to return home for his father’s funeral, a decision that the then Taiwan defence minister said filled him with “righteous fury”. Prof Lin in the end decided to pay his filial respects in Beijing.
Prof Lin retains an indirect link to Taiwan through his wife, who “represents” the island, over which China claims sovereignty, in the National People’s Congress in Beijing.
The announcement of Prof’s Lin appointment could come as early as this week. The ministry of finance in Beijing said it expected a decision on the issue by the World Bank board soon.
The bank once counted Beijing as its largest client, but China’s fast-growing economy has freed it of reliance on foreign development bodies.
In a coup for World Bank president Robert Zoellick last month, Beijing agreed for the first time to become a donor to the World Bank’s fund for poor countries.
Published: January 21 2008, FT
The World Bank will appoint a Chinese economist to a senior position in a move that will buttress the institution’s ties with Beijing and lift the profile of developing countries.
Lin Yifu, or Justin Lin, is expected to be appointed as the organisation’s chief economist, according to bank officials quoted by agencies and the Wall Street Journal.
Prof Lin is one of China’s leading economists, as the head of a think-tank at Peking University and an adviser to the central government.
Highly respected as an economist, his appointment will also strengthen Beijing’s ties to the World Bank.
The World Bank is trying to refurbish its relations with China, joining it as a development partner in Africa and trying to attract more Chinese to work with it in Washington and elsewhere.
Prof Lin has written extensively on China’s famine during the “Great Leap Forward” in the early 1960s, when tens of millions died, and more recently was instrumental in shaping Beijing’s new policy to reinvigorate the rural economy.
The so-called “New Socialist Countryside” policy was the centrepiece of the government’s economic programme announced at the annual session of China’s parliament in 2006.
His recent research has focused the continuing role of the state in China’s economy, and the potential challenge its success poses to conventional theories about the greater efficiencies of the private sector.
Prof Lin gained a PhD at the University of Chicago in 1986 and has twice been awarded China’s top economics honour, the Sun Yefang Prize, in 1993 and 2001.
But Prof Lin is just as well known for his own extraordinary personal history as he is for his professional achievements.
Prof Lin defected from Taiwan in 1979, when stationed as a soldier on the heavily fortified island of Kinmen, just off the coast of China, near Fujian province.
Most famously, Prof Lin, according to the story he himself has told friends, swam from Taiwan to reach the mainland.
Taipei decided on “humanitarian” grounds in 2002 to allow Mr Lin to return home for his father’s funeral, a decision that the then Taiwan defence minister said filled him with “righteous fury”. Prof Lin in the end decided to pay his filial respects in Beijing.
Prof Lin retains an indirect link to Taiwan through his wife, who “represents” the island, over which China claims sovereignty, in the National People’s Congress in Beijing.
The announcement of Prof’s Lin appointment could come as early as this week. The ministry of finance in Beijing said it expected a decision on the issue by the World Bank board soon.
The bank once counted Beijing as its largest client, but China’s fast-growing economy has freed it of reliance on foreign development bodies.
In a coup for World Bank president Robert Zoellick last month, Beijing agreed for the first time to become a donor to the World Bank’s fund for poor countries.
Labels: Justin Lin, Justin Yifu Lin, World Bank, Yifu Lin, 林正義, 林正誼, 林毅夫
¶ 7:43 AM
