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The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) invited Prof. Justin Yifu Lin, Former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, and Honorary Dean of National School of Development at Peking University, to present a distinguished public lecture on ‘Demystifying the Chinese Economy’ on campus today (15 November). The lecture drew a full house of about 500 students, teachers and members of the public, all additional seats were also filled up. 

Professor Lin was the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2008 to 2012, in which capacity he guided the Bank’s intellectual leadership and played a key role in shaping the economic research agenda of the institution. Prior to joining the Bank, Professor Lin served for 15 years as Founding Director and Professor of the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University. In 2007, he gave the Marshall Lectures at the University of Cambridge; and in 2011, the Simon Kuznets Lecture at Yale and the UNU Wider Annual Lecture in Mozambique, the first ever to be held in a developing country. 

As a result of the miraculous economic growth experienced by the country since the market-oriented reform in 1979, China’s status in the global economy has changed dramatically. In the lecture, Professor Lin reflected on China’s unprecedented growth in the past 32 years, examined the reasons of that growth, and discussed prospects and challenges for China to maintain an eight-percent annual growth rate in the coming decades. 

Professor Lin is a member of China’s People’s Congress and Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. He serves on several national and international committees, leading groups, and commissions on development policy, technology, and the environment. These include the UN Millennium Task Force on Hunger; the Eminent Persons Group of the Asian Development Bank; the National Committee on United States-China Relations; the Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System; and the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee. 

Professor Lin received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1986. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. He holds honorary doctoral degrees from Universite D’Auvergne, Fordham University, Nottingham University, the City University of Hong Kong, and The London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of 23 books including The China Miracle: Development Strategy and Economic Reform, The Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off, New Structural Economics: A Framework for Rethinking Development and Policy, and Demystifying the Chinese Economy. He has published more than 100 articles in refereed international journals and collected volumes on history, development, and transition. 

For more photos, please visit:
https://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/events_recap_detail.php?1=1&id=92&s=