15 May 2025, 18:15 
Justin Yifu Lin, 72, is one of China’s most renowned economists, and probably one of those with the most incredible biography. Born in Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China considers an inalienable part of its territory, in 1979, while stationed as a Taiwanese soldier on Kinmen Island, a few miles from mainland China, he swam across the strait, convinced that the future lay on the other shore. He studied Political Economy at Peking University; he traveled to the United States, where he became one of the first Chinese citizens to earn a doctorate after the country’s reopening. He would go on to become the first Chinese person appointed chief economist of the World Bank (2008-2012). Close to the Beijing government, to which he has served as an advisor, he is currently dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University.