From The Observer:
With the credit crunch almost a year old and still far from over, fighting poverty risks sliding down the list of priorities for rich countries struggling against inflation and recession. Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank’s new chief economist, has the unenviable job of persuading governments and the public to remember their responsibilities to the developing world, even when times are hard.
Affable and self-deprecating, Lin is the first holder of the post from a developing country. Until recently, he was a professor at the Beijing University’s China Centre for Economic Research, which he founded, and has been a key player in advising the government on China’s breakneck economic development, including serving as a deputy on the policy-making People’s Congress.
Economists are rarely known as fine specimens of physical fitness, but Lin arrived in China after a dramatic 2,000-metre swim for freedom. He was born and brought up in Taiwan, but during his national service, in 1979, when he was serving on Kinmen island, just off the Chinese mainland, he dived into the sea and defected to the communist state, which was just beginning to open up to the outside world.
