Li Daokui was appointed director general and chief economist of the New Development Bank (NDB), a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS member states that is headquartered in Shanghai, on July 1.

Primarily, Li will be in charge of research and analysis for economic, financial, infrastructure and development issues across BRICS.

A leading Chinese economist in academic and policy research, Li has been a Mansfield Freeman chair professor of economics at Tsinghua University since 2006. He is also Director of the Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking at Tsinghua University.

The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—signed an agreement in July 2014 to set up the NDB, which went into operation in July 2015.

Born in Beijing in 1963, Li graduated with a bachelor's degree from the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University in 1985. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1992.