Lin's long swim

摘要

Thirty years ago China's leaders used to call the World Bank a tool of imperialism. Now China is one of the bank's top borrowers, and in December it became a donor, on a small scale. China may soon make a big contribution to the bank's intellectual ranks. According to whispers at the institution, its new chief economist will be a Chinese citizen. Justin Yifu Lin is the director of the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University. He has twice won his country's top economic honour, the Sun Yefang award, and he has published in the leading journal of his profession, the American Economic Review. But this brilliant record masks an unlikely past. He was born not in China but in Taiwan. He defected to the mainland after serving in the Taiwanese armed forces.