AIIB's president candidate, scholarly economist

From governmental departments to international financial institutes, and from sovereign bonds to the private sector, Jin has experience in almost every essential role in finance.

He is now facing a new challenge and opportunity. President Xi Jinping proposed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) during his visit in Southeast Asia in October 2013. One year later, financial ministers and representatives of the 21 prospective founding members signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Establishing the AIIB. China, India, Singapore, Qatar and Thailand were among them.

In the meantime, Jin started working for AIIB as its the interim secretariat secretary-general. Just two days before the signing of MOU, it was confirmed that he had left CICC.

The AIIB now has 57 prospective founding members, across five continents.

Jin and his colleagues made a huge effort to explain the work of AIIB to countries outside Asia. Jin was one of the great contributors in the expansion of the membership.

The AIIB aims to finance infrastructure in Asia. This is one of Jin's areas of expertise. During his five years at ADB, his worked to alleviate poverty through economic and social development. He helped boost infrastructure building in South Asia and the Mekong Delta area during his term of office.

This may be, in part, due to the passion Jin has for rural areas. He said that he "never stopped thinking about the farmers" after the Cultural Revolution.

No matter what role he held if a policy was beneficial to rural areas or villagers Jin would take part in promoting and executing it.

When he was working at ADB, every time a road was built in a remote village, or rural homes got electricity, he was filled with joy, he wrote in a China Daily article.

It is this interest in the grassroots that motivated Jin to care about developing countries.

There were two ways that developing countries could participate in economic globalization: To make their economy fit in the needs of globalization through structural adjustment and system building; or let the system reflect the interests and needs of developing countries through active participation in the setting up of international norms to safeguard development opportunities, he said during a high-level meeting of developing countries when he was MOF vice minister in 1999.

"I hope developing countries will no longer be the followers, but the masters of globalization in the 21st century."

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