The Man with the Patience to Cook a Stone

People in Economics

F&D profiles Justin Yifu Lin, the first World Bank Chief Economist from a developing or emerging economy

At a reception earlier this year to mark the end of Justin Yifu Lin’s tenure as chief economist of the World Bank, as is customary on such occasions, there was mention of a lifetime of achievements: Justin Lin, the first Chinese of his generation to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago; Justin Lin, the second private citizen to own a car in Beijing; Justin Lin, the first person from a developing country or emerging market to serve as World Bank chief economist.

Alongside these milestones were tributes to his most defining qualities: his determination, his flexibility, his pragmatism. Most memorably, one of his colleagues said, drawing on an African proverb, Lin had patience that could cook a stone.

If ever a person qualified for the description of “right man, right place, right time,” Lin is that man. His qualifications include his arrival in mainland China just as—fortuitously for him—the Communist Party was launching a series of historic market reforms. Then, a serendipitous pairing of Lin’s English language skills with a visiting Nobel Prize–winning economist in need of a translator ended with Lin’s nomination for a scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. And in June 2008, just before the world headed into the worst recession in over half a century, amid increasing clamor for emerging and developing countries to have a greater say in the running of the World Bank, Lin was selected its chief economist—the first person from a developing country to hold the post. The tide of history has been generous to the 60-year-old Lin.

Rethinking development

Fast-forward four years, and Lin is preparing to return to China after his sojourn in Washington, D.C., home of the World Bank, of which he was also a senior vice president. This intensely private, bespectacled economist contemplates the latest stage of his eventful career with a sense of quiet satisfaction. The Bank gave Lin a global platform to push his framework for rethinking development—or, as he terms it, New Structural Economics (see box).

“I opened the door for people to think, for my colleagues to think, to debate,” he says.

Lin, an expert on China’s economy, views himself as semi-detached from the Western-based policymaking circles that have historically dominated development economics. As World Bank chief economist, Lin followed in the footsteps of luminaries such as former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. But his theories are a deliberate and sharp critique of the Washington Consensus, the broad range of “neoliberal” policies previously closely associated with Washington D.C. institutions, including the IMF, the U.S. Treasury, and the World Bank. When asked to confirm whether he was indeed the first World Bank chief economist from a developing country, Lin responds, “Not only the first from a developing country, but also [the first] to have a good understanding of developing countries.”

According to Célestin Monga, Lin’s coauthor and World Bank colleague, Lin is “the one guy in the history of all the chief economists at the World Bank who has actually been part of the lifting out of poverty of 600 million people. Do you need anything else?”

Stiglitz says Lin played a major role in marrying the lessons of growth in east Asia, the fastest-growing region of the world, with development economics.

Model army officer

Lin’s modest background—he was born one of six...