Born on October 15, 1952, in Yilan County, Taiwan, as Lin Zhengyi. Lin is a renowned economist and currently serving as the chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank. He is also a founder of China Center for Economic Research in Peking University. Lin was enrolled by Peking University in 1982 in a master’s program in economy. In 1986, he received a doctorate from the University of Chicago where he had studied agricultural economics under the guidance of late Nobel laureate Theodore Schultz.