China's celebrity economist

ON the evening of May 16, 1979, a Taiwanese military officer named Lin Zhengyi plunged into the waters off Taiwan's Quemoy island where he was commander, and swam for more than three hours to mainland China.

He was soon to become one of China's top economic thinkers and an intellectual celebrity. In 2008, he was appointed the chief economist of the World Bank, the first national of a developing country to hold the prestigious position.

The dramatic life story of Dr Lin (who subsequently changed his name to Justin Lin Yifu) has been chronicled many times in both the Chinese and Taiwanese media as well as elsewhere. On why he made the fateful swim, he revealed that it was because he felt he could make a larger contribution to the well-being of his fellow Chinese on the mainland than in Taiwan. In a letter to his family in Taiwan about a year after his defection, Dr Lin is reported to have written: "Based on my cultural, historical, political, economic and military understanding, it is my belief that returning to the motherland is a historical inevitability; it is also the optimal choice."